Eurogamer in blog format - Xbox 360

We take a closer look at the new levels arriving in next week's BIG Pack DLC.

Eurogamer.PT romps through the Army of Two: The 40th Day demo.

Ubisoft walks us through the prequel co-op campaign in its upcoming stealth shooter revival.

The US and Russia come together to take care of business in Splinter Cell: Conviction's dedicated co-operative mode.

Behind the scenes and the wheel of this Eurogamer Expo favourite and potential summer 2010 blockbuster.

Black Rock Studio shows off the docks section of its upcoming arcade racer.

The Battle of Forli and Bonfire of the Vanities take shape ahead of their January and February launches.

Just past the wicked opening cinematic, and clipped to avoid key story revelations, this is a meaty chunk of the opening level, before War is stripped of many of his powers.

In this video, everyone's favourite horseman takes on a giant enemy crab, and goes upside its head with a massive wagon.

A bit later in the game, War runs into this chap, who puts up a mean fight with a big hammer, but ought to be watching his back instead. Some interesting use of the game's portal gun (yep) evident in this one.

In this video, War has to transport a bomb from the bottom of a level right the way to a top using a range of abilities in order to open a particular door and make progress.

Lynch: he's been there, done it, got the medication.

RedLynx has revealed the three new Trials HD Achievements arriving as part of the BIG Pack DLC. And that's due, remember, on 23rd December for 400 Microsoft Points (£4.80/€9.60).

The new Achievements total 50 gamerpoints. The biggest split (20G) goes to "Look Ma I Can Fly!" and is awarded on the Skyway level for bouncing on five trampolines in a row.

The remainder is split between Piggyback (15G) and No Deal (15G). Piggyback requires riding on the top of a car on the Dangerous Ride level, and No Deal involves landing a bailed-out rider in a box. Read more...

Blue horse blue horse. Wait, that's Avatar. This is Rockstar's openworld horsey adventure.

Martin Sheen's Illusive Man sizes up Shepard ahead of his second outing on 29th January.

Retro revamps can be a harrowing business. For every Pac-Man Championship Edition there's an Alien Syndrome, and a Golden Axe: Beast Rider, and a Final Fight: Streetwise, usually in those distressing proportions. Read more...

Crackdown, famously, snuck up on people. Saddled by a Halo 3 multiplayer beta, everyone assumed it was a bit cack, only for it to be anything but. We loved it. Crackdown 2 is in danger of pulling the same trick. While original developer Realtime Worlds runs around making APB, upstart Ruffian Games, staffed by various members of the original team, is calmly advancing the openworld toybox idea with new gadgets, refined geometry and an ambitious new mission structure. We got to see a bit more of that this week courtesy of a new trailer (watch it below in HD), which introduced new Agent abilities, vehicles and the wicked-looking wingsuit. So, when publisher Microsoft offered us the opportunity to quiz producer James Cope and development director Gareth Noyce about its contents, we jumped at the chance, then sat back down and dug out that adapter thing we use to record phone calls. Microsoft also said it was cool for us to talk about other stuff, so we did that too, but thanks to the vagaries of embargoes you'll have to make do with trailer stuff today and other topics in part two soon. Don't worry though, we took the piss with the restrictions. Let's crack on. Read more...

We've been playing the new Gran Turismo 5 demo, which is due out on Thursday. Here's us taking it for a spin.

Infinity Ward knows about the unlimited ammo bug in Modern Warfare 2 and is working hard on a solution.

"Yes, it'll be eliminated soon enough," the developer's community liaison Robert Bowling said on his Twitter.

The bug, spotted by increasing numbers of gamers on forums (thanks, Kotaku), breaks ammo counters and in some cases removes them entirely - meaning the bullets never run out. Read more...

The Dangerous Dogs Act 1991 clearly states that any dog being a type appearing to the Secretary of State to be bred for fighting, or to have the characteristics of a type bred for that purpose, must be tightly controlled. Indeed, if a dog is dangerously out of control in a public place then the owner is guilty of an offence; or, if the dog while so out of control injures any person, it is an aggravated offence - and likely that said dog will be destroyed.

In short, having sat through a presentation in which dog-inflicted genital mutilation has cropped up in conversation no less than on four separate occasions, it's fair to say that Shadow the wonder dog's time on earth is likely to be short indeed. Dead to Rights: Retribution's last level will be a solemn affair in a Grant City magistrates court, and the closing scene will be a disconsolate Jack Slate seeing him driven away in the back of a white van. Because, as we all know now, Shadow chews balls off. He also plunges his head into chests to bite out hearts, picks up corpses with his teeth to shake them around like a fleshy maraca and has an idle animation that sees him urinate upon the deceased. You'd almost think he was a 'bad dog', if he weren't doing it all to fight crime.

Retribution, in development at Leamington's Volatile Studios rather than its former haunts, isn't rocket science. There's little you haven't seen before in its third-person mix of doggy stealth and third-person action hero violence - but its developers realise they're not at the helm of a revolution in testicle-endangering gameplay. They just want to make a finely honed shooty-brawler that cherry-picks the most fondly remembered features of the series, and make things explode in an entertaining, slick and undeniably familiar fashion. To this end, they may well have succeeded - playing around with Slate's controls is immediately familiar, and immediately satisfying. Read more...

RedLynx unveils the BIG Pack DLC, showing us what's inside the beefy Christmas update that costs about as much as a pint.

Pieces' puzzle game Puzzlegeddon will also be released on Xbox Live Arcade tomorrow. The other game, remember, is Alien Breed.

Eurogamer appraised Puzzlegeddon when released on PC earlier this year. The idea is to match coloured blocks and "shoot missiles at people", said Eurogamer's reviewer Dan Pearson, trying to recall a game "that didn't really stick with me that much to be honest".

Puzzlegeddon will cost 800 Microsoft Points (£6.80/€9.60). Read more...

We're quite excited about Mass Effect 2. This trailer introducing the Sentinel isn't really helping to alleviate this.

EA Los Angeles' long-awaited reboot of the series the started it all looks pretty slick.

Ubisoft's video showcase of the treats you can expect should you throw down some money for the upcoming Conviction special edition.

The latest trailer for Ruffian's Crackdown sequel showcases the new wingsuit and sprint barge abilities along with plenty of Freaks and comedy violence.

SEGA's landed a demo of Vancouver 2010 on Xbox Live Marketplace.

The file's small at 684MB and offers the men's Super-G and Landing Zone events to play. This should give you a taste of the "speed and adrenaline" the game purports to focus on.

Vancouver 2010, developed by Eurocom, is due out here on 15th January. Read more...

Microsoft and Bungie have confirmed that Halo: Reach will see multiple Spartans defending the planet Reach against Covenant invasion.

As illustrated by a sexy new trailer, Reach introduces you to the six-strong Noble Squad, who plan to get all "winter contingency" on the naughty invaders.

Unlike previous Halo trailers, including those for this year's Halo 3: ODST, the Reach teaser is quite cold and grim, suggesting a shift in tone. Read more...

You never forget the moment you fall in love. Whether it's when your heart turns over inside you while she completes that Back to the Future quote you just started, or as your eyes meet across the arena at the local Demolition Derby, it's a memory that will stick with you until the very end.

Destiny can be tricksy, too: my friend Jo realised he had fallen for the woman who would become his wife at the exact instant she backed a car over his foot, and I in turn knew I was hopelessly in love with Just Cause 2 - or at least the latest preview build - when I was knocked off the roof of my speeding VW Beetle by the rebounding mass of Humvee I'd just tethered to a passing palm tree.

We've already written about Rico Rodriguez's magical arm-mounted grapple hook at length, but its seemingly ceaseless brilliance bears reiterating - not just because it's Just Cause 2's main instrument of playful chaos, but because there are a lot of very decent games coming out in early 2010, and I really don't want anyone to forget that, in one of them, you can essentially crazy-glue a baddie to the undercarriage of a passing jumbo jet. Read more...

Valve has put out a patch that addresses a long list of bugs in Left 4 Dead 2, the brilliant co-operative zombie-splatting shooter released earlier this year.

There are changes to hit boxes - the mesh area surrounding a monster that registers hits - and tweaks to the controls of Special Infected. You'll be able to spin the camera when attacked by a Charger or a Smoker, and ghost placement rules have been altered in Scavenge mode.

It's a sum-of-its-parts patch, which is why I've been lazy and pasted the list below. Read more...

The next batch of Borderlands DLC is based on the Thunderdome arena in Mad Max, so much so that it's called Mad Moxxi's Underdome Riot.

The content will arrive for Xbox 360 on 29th December and for PS3 on 7th January. Price will 800 Microsoft Points (£6.80/€9.60) or $10.

Arena quests here will be unlike those in the original campaign, and share more similarities with the wave-based Horde mode in Gears of War 2 or Firefight in Halo 3: ODST. Read more...

RedLynx has pulled back the curtain and exposed the now dated and priced Trials HD BIG Pack downloadable add-on.

Inside are 23 new courses to hop around on and they focus on the medium and hard tiers - the "sweet spot", the developer told us. They are split into 12 medium, 9 hard and 2 extreme.

Each has been built to focus on the new objects added to the editor. On our visit to Finland to visit RedLynx we saw a space-themed level that simulated zero-gravity by using the new wind-gust object. We were shown another level where players must stay atop a moving monster truck, which highlighted the new rolling car model. Read more...

Microsoft's Aaron Greenberg reckons Halo: Reach will be king of the sales castle come the end of 2010 and has even dismissed competition from Gran Turismo 5.

"Is it launching next year?" he joked about the PS3-exclusive Polyphony Digital racer, speaking in an interview with Gamasutra.

"I've seen years and years of mini-games, but I haven't seen that the game is done. They just released the PSP version - maybe that's what they've been working on. I feel confident that there's nothing that will compare in size. Halo: Reach will be the biggest game of 2010." Read more...

Microsoft has finally announced a release date for the Trials HD DLC dubbed BIG Pack.

This will be available here on 23rd December for 400 Microsoft Points (£3.40/€4.80)

We'll bring you full details on what's within tomorrow morning. Stay tuned! Read more...

Ubisoft plans to release a Splinter Cell: Conviction demo early in the New Year.

Hiphopgamer (via VG247) confirmed a January release but stopped short of unearthing a date.

Splinter Cell: Conviction follows a rampant Sam Fisher on a journey of revenge, as he seeks out his daughter's killers. He'll be smashing people's faces into urinals and sneaking around pulling fancy spy manoeuvres, albeit without his familiar briefcase of gadgets. Read more...

Microsoft has updated the new social bits of Xbox Live so that people with restricted child accounts can use Facebook, Twitter and Last.FM with parental consent.

That's if you live outside the US, anyway - the kids in America have to wait until 15th December for the same functionality according to Major Nelson.

Juniors everywhere, meanwhile, will need to tick the boxes that tell the console to remember their login details for those applications, or else they'll need parental permission every time. Read more...

Halo Waypoint developer 343 Industries has hired audio director Sotaro Tojima from Kojima Productions.

His appointment to the internal Microsoft studio was revealed on 343's Twitter.

Tojima composed for Kojima Productions' biggest titles, such as the Metal Gear Solid series, and joins 343 Industries under creative director (and former Bungie employee) Frank O'Connor. Read more...