Game Downloads

Neither the down economic climate nor pressure from online retailers seem to be having much impact on GameStop's plans for global domination of brick-and-mortar videogame stores. Vice President and Managing Director Europe James Kirk says, "Our plan for 2009 is to open 200-300 stores worldwide" in an online excerpt from an article in the December issue of RLI. As ambitious as that sounds, the company opened over 550 locations during 2008. At their current pace they open a whopping 20 to 30 stores weekly.

#content h3 { font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 10px; font-weight: normal;}#content .right h3, #content .left h3 { margin-top: 6px;}.long img { float: left; margin: 0 10px 20px 0;}.left { margin-bottom: 6px; float: left; width: 300px; padding-right: 10px; border-right: 1px dotted #666;}.right { margin-bottom: 6px; width: 300px; float: left; padding-left: 10px;}.threeleft, .threemid, .threeright { margin-bottom: 6px; float: left;}.threeleft { margin-right: 10px;width: 190px;}.threemid { padding: 0 10px; border-left: 1px dotted #666; border-right: 1px dotted #666;width: 200px;}.threeright { padding-left: 10px;width: 190px;}.left img, .right img { margin: 6px 0 4px 0;}.dots { clear: both;} EGM's Top Ten Things We've Learned From Our Xbox Live Headset
Online culture at its finest. By Scott Sharkey

The PlayStation.Blog has posted details on the new version 2.53 firmware update for the PlayStation 3, which enhances the system's support for in-browser Flash support. The next update, which is available for download now, includes full-screen support for Flash players.

Konami has been keeping Gradius series fans happy these past few years with releases like Gradius 5, the PSP Gradius Collection, and the recent Japanese WiiWare title, Gradius ReBirth. But things have gotten a little...bubblier in the new, currently Japan-only Xbox 360 shoot-em-up Otomedius Gorgeous! ("Otome" being the Japanese word for "young woman," and "-dius" being the suffix for any Gradius-inspired game.) Although the series is a spiritual sequel to Gradius, the Otomedius games are more in line with the Parodius series, which took the Gradius brand of shooting and put it in a world of complete cartoon wackiness.

Open-world action titles have come a long way since the last console generation, with many offering massive "living" settings and sharp online integration. But you wouldn't know it from Destroy All Humans!: Path of the Furon, a game that feels both woefully dated and curiously incomplete, consistently displaying distracting presentational hitches.