To the local retailer of your choice and lock in your choice on the spinning wheel of pre-order bonuses on the Standard $60 Edition of The Lord of the Rings: War in the North! Here’s the layout:

Amazon gets a DC LOTR digital comic (but only Part 2) and an in-game sword. Best Buy gets an Elf Theme Pack. GameStop gets the Human Theme Pack (Ha! Have they ever been inside a GameStop? More like, the Barely-Human Theme Pack! BA-DUM-PSSH.) Target gets three tracks from the soundtrack that totally won’t be pirated anyway. Toys R Us will have a poster with artwork by Jim Lee, and BOTH parts of the digital comic, suck it Amazon. And Walmart gets the Dwarf Theme Pack.

Seems like any of the Theme Packs are the way to go. There will also be an extra-fancy Collector’s Edition priced at a whopping $130. It includes three music tracks, an art book and a quiver case. Plus the usual who-cares digital junk: avatar clothes on 360 and a theme on PS3. War in the North is out this fall for 360, PS3 and PC. Full press release follows.

RE: article headline… “Mathom” is the word for “anything that Hobbits had no immediate use for, but were unwilling to throw away.” As if you didn’t know. And that pretty much describes preorder bonuses.

Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment and Snowblind Studios today announced the details of the North American Collector’s Edition and pre-order incentive programs for The Lord of the Rings: War in the North along with a Fall 2011 ship date. The game will be released for Xbox 360, PS3 and PC.

The Collector’s Edition includes:
- Ranger of the North Quiver Case
- War in the North art book featuring concept art of key characters in the game, various enemies and beautiful environments in Middle-earth
- Inside Look: The Music of War in the North—content includes: interviews and footage of legendary composer Inon Zur at Abbey Road Studios and the E3 2011 Concert event, along with three tracks from the game soundtrack

Digital content:
- Ranger of the North Avatar for Xbox Live (Xbox 360 sku) – includes the Ranger armor set, helmet, quiver and bow
- War in the North Theme Pack (PS3 sku) – includes War in the North wallpaper, fonts, icons and much more!
- The Lord of the Rings: War in the North video game

SRP: $129.99

If you choose the standard edition, battle against Sauron’s evil forces and help turn the tide of the War of the Ring with these special pre-order incentives from the following retailers:

Amazon.com
Exclusive to Amazon.com, pre-order the game and get early access to part two of the War in the North Digital Comic written by Brian Wood, illustrated by Simon Coleby and produced by DC Entertainment. The comic book reveals the back story leading up to The Lord of the Rings: War in the North. Players will also receive the Orc Champion sword for in-game use.

Best Buy
Embark on an Elven adventure with the Elf Theme Pack, equipped with a mystical Elven sword, armor and helmet, and get access to the Lothlórien Challenge map.

GameStop
Visit the Citadel of the Stars and the Tower of Stone with the Human Theme Pack equipped with an exclusive human sword, armor and battle attire of the Human Ranger, and get access to the Osgiliath Challenge map.

Target
Immerse yourself in the sounds of Middle-earth with three exclusive tracks from the War in the North soundtrack.

Toys ‘R’ Us
Receive a limited edition, signed War in the North poster by Jim Lee, and access to download parts one and two of the War in the North Digital Comic at launch.

Wal-Mart
A Dwarven quest lies ahead for everyone who chooses to pre-order at Wal-Mart; the Dwarf Theme Pack includes an exclusive dwarf sword, armor and helmet.

For more information register at www.WarInTheNorth.com, and don’t forget to “like” us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/lotrwitn and follow us on Twitter @WarInTheNorth.

GAME> Alan Wake (2010)
SYSTEM> Xbox 360
SOURCE> Toys R Us Gamers Guide, Summer 2010

In the cancelled Kinect version of Alan Wake, you recharged the flashlight by banging the hell out of of Wii Remote and a PlayStation Move controller.

GAME> Kinectimals (2010)
SYSTEM> Xbox 360
SOURCE> Toys R Us Gamer Guide, Spring 2011

Holy jesus, a saber-toothed tiger? I take it all back; Kinect is truly for the hardcore.

That would be NeverDead, a demon-slaying action game coming this fall for PS3 and 360. Today Konami has offered up a bevy of screenshots for your human sacrifice, I MEAN, perusal.

In addition to the statue head thing, I like how the screens show a scene from about two o’clock in the afternoon. Not all demon battles have to take place inside decaying hellholes at midnight, you know.

Konami Digital Entertainment, Inc. today unveiled new screenshots and key art for its all-new original IP, NeverDead for the Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system from Microsoft and PlayStation®3 computer entertainment system, slated to launch in fall 2011. The images reveal the explosive action and combat as the game’s hero and his female companion, Arcadia, take on the horrific, otherworld demons of the future.

NeverDead takes place in the not-too-distant future when the world is threatened by a demonic plague set to blanket the globe. An immortal hero, created by the demons themselves, is forced to use his regenerative powers that allow him to reassemble his own body to evade death and save the world. Gamers will have an arsenal of guns at their disposal, as well as a butterfly design-inspired sword ready to decimate waves of ungodly enemies. NeverDead will feature third-person action gameplay set in a fantasy and horror-influenced universe where supernatural battles between humans and extraordinary creatures dominate a vast city landscape.

Sorry about the unclear headline, those of you who came here expecting to use alabaster baby heads as a weapon against demons.

Mentioned on Kotaku and enthusiastically verified by “Bed Intruder”-on-RBN author Kariodude, the auto-tuned bit of local news sound bite heaven has already been charted and tested. Kariodude is working with the folks who first performed the autotuning, the Gregory Brothers, on this remix.. and the one they did for Double Rainbow.

Kariodude claims the legal issues are already ironed out, citing that the Gregory Brothers needed Antoine Dodson’s permission to release the track for sale on iTunes. Presumably RBN works the same way. I’m not sure where this leaves WAFF, the Atlanta television station that got the quotes from Dodson in the first place. Probably pissed.

You can watch a preview of Kariodude’s work after the jump. There’s no formal release date for the RBN version of “Bed Intruder,” just that it’s coming soon.

Warner Bros has released a CG trailer for the upcoming movie tie-in, Green Lantern: Rise of the Manhunters. There’s not a single whit of gameplay here, but if you’re interested in the quality of the cutscenes (high), the weirdness of Virtua Ryan Reynolds (uncanny valley), and Sinestro’s body type (lithe), the trailer awaits you after the jump.

On top of all that info, the gang also talks about some of the big hits from 2010.  Some of the titles on tap included Vanquish, Mass Effect 2, Bayonetta, Heavy Rain, Super Mario Galaxy 2, Fallout: New Vegas, and so much more.  Will they pick up on the games that you thought were good, or do they pan the games that you love – tune in and find out.

The podcast was mixed, by Stephen “Mickey Rourke Fanboy” Munn, and features “Droid Girl”, performed by Lazyitis.

Download the podcast from here or subscribe to the podcast using one of the services below.   Also make sure to review us on iTunes and now, the Zune Marketplace.  If you have not yet, make sure to  visit our Facebook Fan Page.

GAME> DJ Hero (2009)
SYSTEM> PS2, PS3, 360, Wii
SOURCE> Toys R Us Gamer Guide (Winter 2010)

Finally, a way to make Daft Punk invisible and in my bedroom.

GAME OF THE YEAR: Red Dead Redemption won, beating Call of Duty: Black Ops, God of War III, Halo: Reach and Mass Effect 2.

CHARACTER OF THE YEAR: Coming up ahead of three guys you have probably heard of: the guy from Red Dead, the guy from Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood, and the guy from God of War III, is the guy from Call of Duty: Black Ops. Really. OK, so it would probably have been stupid to give the award to a character who didn’t even debut in 2010, as with Ezio and Kratos, but the guy from Black Ops?

BEST ACTION ADVENTURE GAME: Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood, which was on store shelves for ONE DAY when the nominee list was revealed, beat Red Dead, God of War III and Mario Galaxy 2. Holy crap! A Nintendo game! The bright colors must have temporarily blinded the viewing audience.

RDR was robbed on this one. Every time I try to climb a Borgia Tower and end up leaping to my death, I’ll think of how much I’m enjoying the Year’s Best Action Adventure Game.

BEST HANDHELD GAME: God of War: Ghost of a Developer Who Does Not Care About the PSP beat Professor Layton and the Unwound Future, Super Scribblenauts and Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker. I like how the DS and PSP are mixed into one category (one that would presumably also include iOS games, right?) so that fans do not have to spend much time pretending that portable devices exist.

BEST 360 GAME: Mass Effect 2 defeated Alan Wake, Fable III and Halo: Reach.

BEST PS3 GAME: God of War III beat Heavy Rain, ModNation Racers and Red Dead Redemption.

BEST WII GAME: Super Mario Galaxy 2 won over Donkey Kong Country Returns, Kirby’s Epic Yarn and Metroid: Other M.

Let’s apply some logic to the BEST lists. If RDR is overall GOTY (console agnostic) but is only on the BEST PS3 list, that means that every BEST 360 nominee is better than RDR, or else RDR would have made the 360 list… and yet Halo: Reach and Mass Effect 2 did not win GOTY. And then how can God of War III, a GOTY nominee, beat out RDR on PS3? Does this make any sense? The BEST lists should all be console exclusives to avoid this kind of puzzle.

At least we can agree on one thing… not a single 2010 Wii release was worth including in the Top Five Games of the Year. /eyeroll. I imagine the problem is finding anybody who actually plays both the kind of games that are on the GOTY list and the kind of games that come out for Wii. There’s just nobody who can adequately and fairly compare them.

MOST ANTICIPATED GAME: It’s Portal 2 over Batman: Arkham City, Bioshock: Infinite and Gears of War 3. I can’t fault the VGAs for snubbing Nintendo in this category since nobody has any idea what Nintendo is releasing in 2011.

The VGAs also presents awards to Costume Quest, “Far Away” and Undead Nightmare from RDR, and Starcraft II… but you can read about the rest of the awards list here.

It would be uncharitable to call Dragon Ball Raging Blast 2 a Madden-style roster update in the long-running franchise. The game is leagues beyond 2008′s Dragon Ball Z Burst Limit and contains some nice upgrades on last year’s original Raging Blast. Your mileage on this one is, as ever, dependent on your fondness of Goku and his groundbreaking anime pals, but for a slippery, IP-based fighting game, it manages to be a heck of a lot of fun.

The biggest switchup in Raging Blast 2 is that the game doesn’t even bother with leading you through the anime storylines. As a DBZ fan, I was initially surprised at the lack of the familiar linear narrative, but I shortly realized that I didn’t need that crutch. Making players pit Goku against Freiza in game after game is the DBZ equivalent of all the Hoth levels in Star Wars games. We’ve done it. We know how it ends. How about something new?

Raging Blast 2′s something new is Galaxy Mode. Every character gets his or her own series of levels, and you can choose where to start and who to play. If you want to tackle Goku’s “galaxy” of fights first, go ahead. If you want to instead play as Captain Ginyu, you’ve got the option. Half of the game’s impressive list of playable characters is unlocked from the start, so there’s no more slogging through Saga after Saga to get to the fan-favorites.

The battles inside each galaxy either re-create famous battles (so you storyline fetishists do retain that possibility) or set up wholly new encounters. A nice touch is that the fight’s pregame and postgame audio attempts to make sense of the pairings. Often characters will directly reference each other, which is no mean feat when you have potentially hundreds of matchups. At the end of a fight between Krillin and Android 18, a triumphant Krillin takes on a concerned expression and asks “Are you OK, honey?” Because, you see, in the show, those two eventually were married. If you have Yamcha face off against Dr. Gero, Yamcha will begin the match by vowing “This won’t be like last time!” because, previously on “Dragon Ball Z,” Dr. Gero defeated Yamcha by punching his fist right through Yamcha’s body. (He got better.)

Somebody, somewhere, was paying attention, and details like that reward the fans.

I genuinely appreciate that I can gad about the Galaxy Mode list picking and choosing the characters I want to try on. And nearly everything you do unlocks something else. Working through single-player opens up new customizable attack moves, hidden levels, and freezeframes of famous anime moments.

The look does a fantastic job of sticking true to the series (which is why the battle environments might seem a little spartan; these guys were constantly fighting in empty chasms and unpopulated fields.) When characters take on battle damage, they develop little sketchy hand-drawn fatigue lines and adorable Toriyama-approved sweat beads.

But you’re not going to want to walk into Raging Blast 2 and expect a laser-quality precision fighting game. This is severe mashery. It is loose and occasionally outright weird, with some tense moments when the sweet super attacks fall limp for no reason. Not being concerned about holding true to a Street Fighter tournament experience, the spammable slipperiness of the combat really did not bother me. What counts, to me, is that I can hold my own with some basic attacks, store up some Ki energy, and then trigger a character-specific super attack that makes be feel like I trained with King Kai himself. It looks like the cartoon. It looks fun.

Once you have unlocked an assortment of special moves, you can customize your favorites with four unique attacks. While some of the supers are shared among characters (like the boring temporary-blindness move Solar Flare), so many more are pulled directly out of the show. The snazzier attacks reveal themselves with all the pomp of a Final Fantasy summon, displaying camera changes and specialized animations that dupe magic moments from the show (as when Yamcha ends his Wolf Fang Fist with a dramatically-inserted wolf head and a roguish gleam in his eye.)

Yes, there is still plenty of shared motion animation. Everybody flies and spins and reacts using the same basic movements. However, the special moves, character audio and other details do a great job of differentiating the fighters… and let’s face it, you can’t expect a game with 90 characters to have independently developed each individualized motion. I’d rather see a large cast with some similar cores but personalized super attacks and anime audio, then be stuck with ten playables. DBZ demands a massive list of characters, including Transformations and Fusion versions. (I love that Raging Blast 2 lets you call up a character’s Fusion form only when you have both halves of the Fusion on your team!)

Another anime callout: repeated wins in the World Tournament or Cell Games modes unlocks new sets of voiceover work for the play-by-play announcer (these modes specifically recreate sagas in the show where everybody battles in Pokemon-style bracket tourneys.) It does not take too long before your tournament battle includes brief bits of audio from surprise guests to the announcer booth, like Vegeta. Again, it’s unnecessary little details that fans will dig.

Although the unlockable list is almost superhumanly long (all told, it numbers well into the hundreds), it would have been nice to get some direction from the game about what is coming next. You have no idea how to chase specific unlockables, like the extra playable characters. You just have to keep playing and see what shows up.

Here’s a nice bonus that you don’t have to unlock: Raging Blast 2 comes with an exclusive 30-minute cartoon, a remake of a 1993 anime entitled “Plan to Eradicate the Super Saiyans.”

With these yearly installments, it’s always going to seem like the needle isn’t moving far enough. If you’re a DBZ fan who hasn’t tried any of the current generation’s games (or only saw Burst Limit), you need to pick up Raging Blast 2. If you had Raging Blast, you may want to rent 2 to see if the changes are strong enough.

What I want them to do now is find a way to add in all the non-aggro characters, so consistent no-shows like Bulma, Master Roshi and King Kai could be added to the roster.

For anime-true action but some sloppy controls, Dragon Ball Raging Blast 2 gets 4 out of 5 Aeropausonauts.

Dragon Ball Raging Blast 2 was released November 2010 (NA) on PS3 and 360.
Rated T

Check out Dragon Ball Raging Blast 2 and other PS3 reviews at Test Freaks.