Downloadable: Monday Night Combat

It didn't arrive with quite the fanfare of some of its competitors, but Monday Night Combat became the online multiplayer game of choice for many and quickly grew by word of mouth. A combination of cartoon-like art, crazy announcer, and some strategic elements—like robots to push at the enemy's base and an in-game economy for buying upgrades and deployables—lent just the right amount of structure to make this third person shooter feel like a sport. With six character classes to play, each with well-balanced roles to play for your team, it takes a little work to learn how to really play the game. The payoff comes from the subsequent sense of satisfaction from contributing to a win in either competitive or cooperative modes. Read more »

DeathSpank: Thongs of Virtue will be released on the PC through Steam on November 30 for $14.99 and can now be pre-ordered for 10% off.

Additionally, the original DeathSpank and DeathSpank: Thongs of Virtue will be released for the Mac on December 14, both featuring the same $14.99 price-tag. Read more »

Electronic Arts has released Shank and DeathSpank, previously only available on the PS3 and Xbox 360, on the PC.

Both were released through the EA Partners publishing program. Shank was developed by Klei Entertainment and DeathSpank was created by Hothead Games.The games are now available through Steam and support Steamworks features like Achievements, Steam Cloud, and Leaderboards. Like the console versions, both titles support local-only co-op. Read more »

Shacknews receives a slew of new screenshots and trailers for upcoming games everyday. The most anticipated titles receive their own post, because we know you're eager to see that content. For the rest, we have the Daily Filter, a place to feature all of the media we add to our enormous database on a daily basis.

Today's Filter is another big one, adding various screens and movies for Fighters Uncaged, Cities XL 2011, Active Life Explorer, DC Universe Online, Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, NBA 2K11, Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 2, Yakuza 4, Shogun 2: Total War, Dragon Ball: Raging Blast 2, Shaun White Skateboarding, Vanquish, Okamiden, League of Legends, Nail'd, GoldenEye 007 Wii, and Your Shape: Fitness Evolved. Read more »

PC gamers left out when Hothead's humorous action RPG Deathspank debuted on the Xbox 360 and PS3 earlier this year, your calls have been heard. Today the developer revealed the first game in the series will arrive for the PC on October 26 for $14.99.

Pre-ordering the game on Steam will get 10% knocked off that price, bringing it down to $13.49. Or, if you're in a bargaining sort of mood, there's the cleverly named 'Shank and Spank' bundle--which pairs DeathSpank with Klei Entertainment's Shank. Steam pre-orders for the bundle brings the combined price down 15% ($25.48 total). A Mac OSX version of Deathspank is also in the works but no release date for it was provided. Read more »

Now that July is behind us and Xbox Live's 'Summer of Arcade' is in full-swing, it's a good a time as any to check out the initial sales figures for the various XBLA titles released over the past several weeks.

GamerBytes editor Ryan Langley has taken a look at Xbox Live Arcade Leaderboards for July to determine which games have been played the most since their respective release dates. It's worth noting that his figures are based on Leaderboard activity, so these sales-approximations only reflect those who've purchased and played on XBLA. Six new XBLA releases came out in July: Monkey Island 2: Special Edition, Blacklight: Tango Down, Deadliest Warrior: The Game, DeathSpank, Limbo, and Hydro Thunder Hurricane. Read more »

Shacknews receives a slew of new screenshots and trailers for upcoming games everyday. The most anticipated titles receive their own post, because we know you're eager to see that content. For the rest, we have the Daily Filter, a place to feature all of the media we add to our enormous database on a daily basis.

Today's Daily Filter includes video of the Street Fighter X Tekken and Mega Man Universe panels at Comic-Con 2010. We've also added a behind-the-scenes video for Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days along with three other trailers for the upcoming sequel. Activision takes gamers behind-the-scenes of a recent music re-recording session for Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock, Hothead Games takes a unique (and hilarious) approach to "Dev Diaries" in a video for Deathspank and we take a look at the NFC North in a new "sizzle" video for Madden NFL 11. If that's not enough content for you, we've also added new screens for Dungeon Siege 3 and media for Bakugan Battle Brawlers: Defenders of the Core, Mushroom Age and Shogun 2: Total War. Read more »

Some say Weekend Confirmed sounds like a morning show and this week it truly is as we recorded early to help Jeff get a head start on his journey down to San Diego for Comic-Con. With Garnett and Brian up early too, the caffeine-fueled show gets started with a flashback as World of Warcraft has gotten its clutches back around one of the guys. There's also a new perspective on DeathSpank, Singularity, and this week's Cannata-ford a New Game by unanimous decision: Alien Swarm. Your feedback on how value figures into your assessment of a game came across loud and clear and it provides the springboard to lead into the Warning. This week it's a look at some of the crew's favorite games growing up and "next-gen" faces a reckoning. June's NPD sales figures lead the news in the Front Page and Brian also has a complete report from EA's summer studio showcase.

Weekend Confirmed Ep. 18 - 07/23/2010 Read more »

The power trio of Garnett, Brian, and Jeff celebrate the sun finally making its presence felt in the SoCal summer with a sizzling show. Whatcha Been Playin kicks it all off with NCAA Football 11, BlazBlue: Continuum Shift, DeathSpank, Sin & Punishment: Star Successor, and more. For the budget-conscious this week's Cannata-ford a New Game includes a classic free Half-life mod. In the Warning it's role-playing versus roll playing and concerns over there being too many games; but that's after Jeff hears a little listener feedback on his Deadly Premonition rant. It all winds up in the Front Page with the 1vs.100 cancellation, word on new plans afoot at developer Double Fine, and all the rest of the news.

Weekend Confirmed Ep. 17 - 07/16/2010 Read more »

Shacknews receives a slew of new screenshots and trailers for upcoming games everyday. The most anticipated titles receive their own post, because we know you're eager to see that content. For the rest, we have the Daily Filter, a place where the rest of that content can be featured on our front page rather than be uploaded and forgotten.

Today's Daily Filter features the launch trailer for Ron Gilbert's DeathSpank, a BlazBlue: Continuum Shift video introducing the character Makoto and a "reveal" trailer for Bakugan Battle Brawlers: Defenders of the Core. We also have a trailer for the WiiWare title Furry Legends and the "Season One" trailer for League of Legends. Read more »

"Television show turned XBLA game adaptation" Deadliest Warrior joins DeathSpank as this week's Xbox Live Arcade offering, Major Nelson recently posted. Based on the Spike TV show of the same name, Deadliest Warrior pits two fighters of varying lethality against each other in the extremely scientific mission to discover who is (or was) the ultimate human killing machine. DeathSpank includes unicorn poop as a item, which is all you need to know about the Ron Gilbert-designed title before you start saving your Microsoft space dollars.

Deadliest Warrior will be available for 800MS Points ($10), while DeathSpank asks 1200MS points ($15) to join the epic quest. Read more »

Ron Gilbert's DeathSpank is looking awesome! If you want some impressions, be sure to check out today's episode of Weekend Confirmed! Meanwhile, you can get a look at some of the "epic weapons" you'll be utilizing when the game is released next week on PSN and XBLA.

Everybody's been playing Crackdown 2 but from the sounds of it they won't be much longer. San Diego-based comic Christian Spicer adds his voice to the disappointment Garnett, Brian, and Jeff express over the sequel. But it fares better than Deadly Premonition did with Jeff. Not to worry, ArmA 2: Operation Arrowhead and DeathSpank help Whatcha Been Playin finish strong. A trio of awesome strategy games perfect for a long summer's playcation fills out this week's Cannata-ford a New Game. Your comments on 3DS pricing and requiring a complete game one save to play White Knight Chronicles 2 kicks off the Warning before getting to topics like what makes an MMO good and the viability of an honor system difficulty mechanic in open world games. Brian brings it home in the Front Page with news including the announcement of Dragon Age 2, four DLC packs coming for Red Dead Redemption, E3 Game Critics Awards winners, and more.

Weekend Confirmed Ep. 16 - 07/09/2010 Read more »

DeathSpank producer Hamish Miller takes the microphone to narrate a new gameplay trailer with three minutes of co-op footage from the Ron Gilbert-created "very funny" action RPG, showing the wholesale slaughter of everything from ogres to unicorns.

Developed by Hothead Games, DeathSpank is headed for a $14.99 (1200 MS Points) downloadable PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 release--on July 14 for the former and July 15 for the latter. A PC release later has often been hinted at but remains unconfirmed. Read more »

Ron Gilbert, one of the creators of The Secret of Monkey Island, will be releasing his new game, DeathSpank, in July. The action-RPG is loaded with humor and loot and will be released on the PlayStation Network on July 13 and on Xbox Live Arcade on July 14.

The downloadable game will run $14.99 (1200 MS Points) and include local co-op gameplay with player 1 manning DeathSpank and player 2 controlling his sidekick, Sparkles the Wizard. Read more »