Thor: The Video Game is a third person action adventure game based of the Marvel movie.

All preorders of Atlus adventure-puzzle game to include art book and soundtrack; Deluxe Edition packs in polka dot boxers, T-shirt, sexy pillowcase for an extra $20.

Atlus has dated its summer fling. The publisher today announced that the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 adventure puzzle game Catherine will launch in North America July 26 in standard and collector’s editions.

The “Love is Over” Deluxe Edition of Catherine will come bundled with some familiar items from the game. Players will get a pair of polka-dot boxers like those worn by protagonist Vincent, an “empty hearts” T-shirt sported by Catherine, and a pillowcase with the titular character’s scantily clad likeness on it. The Deluxe Edition will sell for $80 and will be delivered in a pizza box from Stray Sheep, the drinking establishment featured in the game.

In addition, Atlus is offering some schwag for those who preorder either the Deluxe Edition of Catherine or the $60 standard release of the game. Gamers who commit to a purchase in advance will receive a 36-page art book, as well as an 11-track CD with remixes of the game’s music.

Catherine has players navigating tricky relationship waters as Vincent. When the commitment-phobic protagonist’s girlfriend Katherine starts talking about taking their relationship to the next level, Vincent finds himself straying. While out drinking with friends, he meets a flirty bombshell named Catherine, whom–after a series of events he can’t quite recall–he wakes up next to the following morning.

In addition to helping Vincent make decisions to extricate himself from the situation, players will be called on to fight off the physical manifestations of his fears and guilt as he sleeps. Atlus will also include local competitive and cooperative multiplayer modes, complete with leaderboard support.

Although the game is an original property, Catherine is a collaboration between a number of notable creators. Katsura Hashino, director of Persona 3 and 4, is serving as producer on Catherine, with help from that series’ character artist Shigenori Soejima and composer Shoji Meguro. Going beyond the world of games, Japanese animation shop Studio4˚C (Tekkonkinkreet, Halo Legends) also lent its talents to the project.

Yakuza creator’s squad-based third-person shooter about a robotic uprising gets a new release window.

Humanity’s inevitable subjugation by its own sentient robotic creations has a new kickoff window. Sega today announced an early 2012 launch for Binary Domain, the third-person squad-based shooter from Yakuza creator Toshihiro Nagoshi.

Binary Domain is set in Tokyo in the year 2080, a time when humans are locked in battle with robots. In the game, players take control of a human peacekeeping team set on regaining control of the city.

“When you hear sci-fi you may think of cold, clinical environments, but with Binary Domain I wanted to combine this with a deep human drama,” Nagoshi said upon the game’s announcement. “The keyword we have in mind for this project is ‘Life.’ I wanted to make something that will be accepted by both the Japanese and Western markets, and this fundamental theme is something everyone knows but which the full extent of can be difficult to grasp.”

Speaking with GameSpot, Nagoshi also discussed the mechanics of how the game handles squad-based combat, the development team’s focus on strong friendly AI, and how he intends to breathe fresh life into a well-worn man-versus-robots premise.

Driver: San Francisco will let you change lanes…and change identities. Get the details in our hands-on report.

Drawing inspiration from such classics as Bullit and The French Connection, as well as more contemporary titles, such as the Bourne series, Driver: San Francisco is aiming to instill some of Hollywood’s hard-nosed cop bravado into its action racing formula. Recently, we got the chance to go behind the wheel of this latest entry in the Driver series alongside series creator Martin Edmondson of developer Ubisoft Reflections.

While previous entries in this series have dabbled in the realm of third-person combat, our demo of Driver: San Francisco forwent such extraneous features and focused on making the driving as fun and wild as possible.

Our session with Driver San Francisco picked up with the continuing story of the series–months after the events that took place in the awkwardly titled DRIV3R. The series’ protagonist, on-again, off-again police officer Tanner, had finally succeeded in putting the villain Jericho behind bars. Jericho’s sentencing was close at hand, but as we soon discovered, not everything would go according to plan.

In brief, Jericho hatched a daring scheme involving an acid tablet, a rocket launcher, and a local news helicopter to make his escape, but not before forcing Tanner into a deadly automotive wreck. After regaining consciousness, Tanner discovered that this event had yielded unexpected results: he could now leave his body and posses other drivers on the San Francisco streets.

With the press of a button we could depart our mortal shell and take flight above the city. From here we could glide around using the two analog sticks (our demonstration was on an Xbox 360) and possess the driver of any vehicle we wanted. In the beginning we were limited to a very intimate view of the city.

However, as our powers developed, we were eventually able to pull the camera back to reveal the entire city and instantly jump anywhere we wanted. As Edmondson noted, including the ability to quickly hop from one side of this massive city to the next in mere moments has been no small technical feat.

To pull this off, the team at Ubisoft Reflections has forgone the use of any middleware in favor of building all its own tech from the ground up–and keeping it running at a smooth 60 frames per second no less.

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Exciting gameplay packed with clever mechanics and framed by a compelling artistic vision make Outland a superb experience.

We go underground on the Red Planet in the sequel to 2009′s Red Faction: Guerrilla.

In Red Faction: Armageddon we are on Mars with a shaven-headed Mason once again: Darius Mason this time, grandson of Alex, hero of 2009′s Red Faction: Guerrilla. But where Guerrilla had us rove around on the Martian surface, Armageddon takes us underground. Terraforming has failed since the events of the last game, making Mars uninhabitable aboveground, forcing the human population to relocate into deep networks of rocky caverns. And where Guerrilla was open-world, Armageddon is basically linear, though with some larger, open areas suitable for sandbox-style play linked by the game’s subterranean roads and corridors.

The game’s producer, Jim Boone, tells us Armageddon’s linearity comes from player feedback. Though fans of the previous game enjoyed the vehicles and free-form destruction, he says, they were less keen on trundling long distances through an open environment. He also tells us that some 20 percent of the third-person action still takes place topside, though we didn’t see any sky for the few-hour duration of our hands-on demo, which was taken from early in the game.

As the demo began, the humans were already besieged by huge and vicious insectile beasties. Since these came from deep within the planet Mars and the humans from planet Earth, they are technically the natives. For the purposes of this preview, however, and because they are huge and vicious insectile beasties, we shall call them aliens. Our hero Darius is somehow to blame for the alien uprising–but inadvertently, mind you, and doing his best to make up for it. In the course of the demo, he escorts a convoy through hostile territory, fetches power cells and fixes water pumps for beleaguered civilians, and demolishes all manner of alien-infested structures.

Among the enemies are various brightly coloured red and green creatures, accessorised with organic blades and spikes and ranged bioweapon fire–glowing green globs that explode just after impact. We encountered plenty of ravagers: fast-moving, wall-climbing aliens with bone-bladed arms. Another alien creature, a stealthy variant, is invisible except when attacking but signals its proximity with a blurring effect on Darius’ vision. Others are less subtle and less buglike: one creature was a hulking, horned biped, like a Martian minotaur.

We weren’t short of hardware to see off the alien hordes, with Armageddon forever dropping new weapons in our path, but chief among them was the tremendously fun magnet gun. With this, the game’s signature weapon, you shoot item A (say, the side of a building) and then shoot item B (say, a spiky ravager) to fling the one into the other, as if by magnetic attraction. The quick two-shot operation works a bit like Dead Space’s kinesis module, letting you smash large chunks of the level furniture–girders, walkways, shacks, and the like–into your squishable foes, but also letting you launch enemies up and away, by firing at them and then at the distant cavern ceiling.

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From the team that created the award-winning Greed Corp comes Gatling Gears. Blow stuff up with Gatling Gears this May!

Second installment in EA’s bifurcated series dropping in European markets a day before the film is released this summer; retailers indicate July 12 US bow.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 was released last November alongside the film of the same name to a cold reception. Like the film, the video game adaptations were also bifurcated, and EA will have a chance at critical redemption this summer when Part 2 arrives during the week before the film drops this July.

The release date news stems from a new trailer for the game (embedded below), which is introduced by Emma Watson, who plays the part of Hermione Granger from J.K. Rowling’s magical universe.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 will arrive in theaters worldwide on July 15, which means gamers will have the first crack at the culmination of the Harry Potter universe.

July 14 is a Thursday, and the release date shown in the video is meant for the European market. Traditionally, games are released on Tuesdays in North America, which would make a July 12 release date likely for this region. A number of US retailers, including GameStop, are also listing the game for a July 12 bow.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 will be available for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii, DS, and PC.

Dont watch unless you like to see a huger spoiler in action as Wheatley takes over in this clip from Portal 2.

Over-the-top, bloody, and bursting with content, Mortal Kombat is a return to form for the franchise.

Despite spending about a month in 1993 pouring over magazine shots of the arcade cabinet for Mortal Kombat 2, reading character Bios and memorising movelists, I wouldn’t call myself a Mortal Kombat fan. Sure, I loved the first 2 games but so did everyone. They were amazing!

Luckily for me this latest Mortal Kombat game is rebooting the series in hopes of restoring its former glory and recapturing the essence of what made it an early nineties arcade favourite. With a roster of familiar faces, a simplified but robust combat system and all the gore and fatalities that were missing from its predecessor; MK Vs DC Universe, it’s doing a damn good job.

The combat system feels tight and well balanced and whether you’re a beat-em-up veteran or a genre newbie you’ll be performing blood-splattered fatalities and the bone-crunching X-ray combos in minutes. It’s easy enough that you can jump straight in but has the depth to keep you up half the night coming up with new combos and juggles to take online.

With tutorials, Training modes, a narrative driven Story mode, standard Arcade ladders and Tag Team play as well as an extensive array of challenge matches and old skool “Test Your Might” minigames there’s more than enough to keep you occupied, though thankfully they stopped shot of Mortal Chess or Mahjong Kombat. (Though if you’re reading this Netherrealm, I would totally play Mahjong Kombat)

If you’re just after some post-pub nostalgic button-mashing it doesn’t disappoint but equally, if you’re the type to unlock every last alternate costume and piece of concept art then you’ll definitely be getting your money’s worth.