Entertainment Electronics Blog

Last week brought word that the mystery code found in every new copy of Darksiders was worth a free copy of Red Faction: Guerilla. If you lost your code though, there’s still hope.

If you have a new copy of the game but no code, fill out this form to collect your prize. Bear in mind that you’ll also need to send in the purchase receipt as well as the package barcode.

Doing so will earn you a free copy of Red Faction: Guerilla and a “Hellbook” disc filled with art and other assets. The whole package should arrive in roughly four weeks.

This offer is only available for U.S. residents and ends March 7. If you’re still not sure about Darksiders, a demo will be out February 25.

It’s not nearly as big in North America as it is in Europe, but gamers on both sides of the pond will soon be able to enjoy MotoGP. Capcom has announced that the motorcycle racers will be available in North America next month.

Users will be able to download all 2010 season content for free, which includes new tracks, team updates and new motorcycles. The content will be available free.

If you’re into motorcycle racing, then it sounds like a treat. If you’re not sure, a demo should be out sometime soon.

MotoGP 09/10 will be out March 16 on Xbox 360 and PS3 in North America, and March 19 in Europe.

Flight Control, developer Firemint’s best-selling iPhone app, is coming to DSiWare next week. The touchscreen-controlled runway management game is set to release next Monday, February 22 for 500 DSi Points ($5).

Like the original on iPhone, this version of Flight Control tasks players with drawing lines over a busy airstrip in order to safely guide planes to the ground. The DSi edition includes ten aircraft and the four level types from the original game, as well as a brand new stage set in a snowy, windswept airfield.

Granted, Flight Control is only 99 cents right now on the App Store. Then again, DSi owners might be willing to pay a slight premium for more bite-sized games like this — and, with any luck, we’ll see fewer throwaway apps in the process.

THQ has apparently stumbled upon a fundamental truth — people like free stuff. Having realized this, they seem to be giving away games every chance they get. The Dawn of War II expansion Chaos Rising is just the latest THQ product to get such an incentive.

If you buy Chaos Rising at at GameStop or Best Buy, or download it from GameTap, Steam or Metaboli, you will get a free PC copy of 2008’s Saints Row 2. The two games don’t really have a lot (or anything) in common, but it’s not a bad way to pick up one of 2008’s more underrated games.

Other promotions include a free copy of Red Faction: Guerilla with the purchase of a new copy of Darksiders. These offers seem to be getting a lot of positive buzz around the web, so expect similar promotions in the future.

Dawn of War II: Chaos Rising will be out March 11.

The surprising success of Borderlands — some 3 million units have been sold since its launch in 2009 — has earned Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford some serious bragging rights. He exercised them in a recent interview with Gamasutra, calling out analyst Michael Pachter for suggesting that Borderlands had been “sent to die” before the game’s release.

“We were sandwiched between the two biggest first-person shooter franchises ever,” Pitchford said. “And the guys at BioWare, who walk on water, were releasing Dragon Age around the same time.”

“It was tough for me, because it’s Mike’s job to analyze these things,” he said, adding, “You know what, Mike? I knew you were wrong.”

Pachter made those comments back in October 2009. At the time, he summarized Borderlands’ chances as “sent to die. I think Borderlands is the definition of a game that should have had it’s own window and not be up against all this stuff.”

“It’s absolutely the same audience. I don’t think it’s as much an RPG as they would like us to believe. If it’s an RPG, Dragon Age is going to kick its butt; and if it’s a shooter, Call of Duty or something else is going to kick its butt.”

Even Pitchford admitted some trepidation last July, “When people take risks and it’s not rewarded, in the case of Mirror’s Edge, it’s makes it harder for others to be comfortable taking risks. Yeah, I’m terrified. And [Borderlands is] an original brand, too, so it’s even more risky.”

Of course, Borderlands was a massive success, and is set to add a third DLC pack soon. Beyond that, a sequel is pretty much a no-brainer. Amazing how much things can change over the course of six months, isn’t it?

Have you downloaded the Battlefield Bad Company 2 demo on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360? If you have, you’re not alone. EA has tweeted that some 3.5 million people have taken the plunge on both platforms.

The demo launched earlier this month, and will end next week. Interest in the demo can potentially be chalked up to Battlefield 1943, which enjoyed considerable success as a downloadable title last year.

If you haven’t tried it out, you have until February 25 to download it and play it for yourself. After that, you’ll have to wait until it arrives on the PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 on March 2.

Team Fortress 2 has been out for over two years, and in that time developed a reputation for a steady stream of free, post-launch content. Now the Engineer class is the only one remaining for a big update, but Valve assures that won’t be where the flow of new goodies ends. A Community Fortress interview with Valve’s Robin Walker confirms that there are other updates in the works, for both before and after the final class update. “We’ve got multiple updates in the works still, at least one of which will land before the Engineer pack,” said Walker. “As always, we haven’t planned too much out beyond that point, because we want to see what feedback we get from the community.”

This doesn’t give much insight to when the Engie update might come, or what to expect from other updates. But Valve has continuously surprised with new additions like the Hats, so even without class-specific patches we’re sure to see some interesting new additions coming. Walker also mentions that the War update was created because the team thought that the Spy & Sniper combo update made fans unlikely to appreciate a single class update. Now that the Engineer is the only one left, we have to wonder what Valve will do to spice it up. The interview reaches into the minutiae of competitive Team Fortress 2 play, so give it a read if you want all the technical details.

Avatar the movie is making tons of money and breaking all sorts of records. Ubisoft’s Avatar the game, on the other hand, is not. In light of the game being projected to sell 2.5 million copies across all platforms — a figure well below the expected number of somewhere between 3.5 and 5 million copies — Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot revealed to investors recently that Ubisoft will begin focusing more on their franchises rather than spending more on licensed titles like Avatar.

“Our plan is to take more care of our high end franchises, we will leave less place for licensed games,” Guillemot said in an investor call, reports GamesIndustry.biz. “So the goal is to reuse the investment and licenses and put more emphasis on the making of our brands bigger and make sure they can come more often with high quality. So it doesn’t mean we will stop but we’re going to spend less in licenses in the future.”

Given the success that the movie has enjoyed, it’s surprising to discover that the videogame hasn’t done better — particularly when considering that it was released on six platforms. But given the quality of many licensed titles out there, it might be for the best that Ubisoft instead shifts some of its efforts towards it franchises, which include Splinter Cell, Ghost Recon, Prince of Persia, and Assassin’s Creed. Ubisoft has released more than a few games based on licenses in recent years, including Surf’s Up, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Lost, King Kong, and Naruto.

Although Avatar didn’t lose money for Ubisoft, Guillemot seems to think that there’s more money to be made by focusing on their own high quality titles — or at least ones that don’t require them to fork over a whole lot of cash in licensing fees.

You may not have noticed this, but Capcom has made a lot of Mega Man games. Between all the disparate series and spin-offs, it would have been easy to miss the four (yes, four) Mega Man Zero games for the Gameboy Advance. Capcom is ready to remedy that hole in your gaming history with the Mega Man Zero Collection for the DS. The collection, due out this summer, compiles all of the games in the series, which takes place 100 years after the Mega Man X series.

The Zero games were praised for carrying the torch of old-school (read: hard) Mega Man platforming while Capcom buttered its bread with the profits from the Mega Man Battle Network games. This will be the third Mega Man series compilation, after the Mega Man Anniversary Collection and Mega Man X Collection. These three compilations will account for almost half of the total number of Mega Man series in existence, so at least we’re making progress. Now cross your fingers for an official homage to Mega Man Legends.

Shortly over a year after The Lost and Damned debuted on the Xbox 360, Grand Theft Auto IV’s Episodes from Liberty City will no longer be exclusive to Microsoft’s console. Rockstar just announced plans to bring both The Ballad of Gay Tony and The Lost and Damned to PC and PlayStation 3 this March.

The two episodes were temporarily Xbox 360 exclusives thanks to a little encouragement on Microsoft’s part — $50 million worth, to be precise. That deal appears to have run its course, however, and with all the talk of lower-than-expected sales of the expansions on Xbox 360, it shouldn’t be too surprising to see them turning up on other platforms.

Look for both GTA Episodes on the PlayStation Store, the Games for Windows Live Marketplace, and at retail on March 30.