Seems SEGA isn’t out of the game just yet, and has decided to produce and release a brand new addition to their classic HotD series – House of the Dead: Overkill.

The game itself seems to be a prequel in the long-running franchise of light-gun shooters, and takes place in a small backwater town of Bayou City, where rookie AMS agent “G” finds himself and new partner Washington eventually battling with hordes of the walking dead created by a mysterious source. (three guesses as to who might have a hand in it)

Overkill appears to take a page out of Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles in it’s use of the Wiimote targeting and looks to have it’s roots in the traditional on-rails gameplay of previous titles of the series. Headstrong Studios, who have taken it upon themselves to create the game, have said that they’re basing it off of old grindhouse movies, right down to the gritty film of cutscenes and the copious amounts of gore and violence that should be commonplace in anything related to hacking apart zombies.

If the trailer is a faithful depiction of the actual gameplay of the title, then I do believe we have ourselves another fine offspring of the HotD’s deliciously screwed-up family. (with HotD4 being the redheaded stepchild and HotD3 being the awkward middle-child in comparison to their elder sibling titles)

Let it not be said that we at Powet do not appreciate artistic talent and genuine creativity. This little gem surfaced over at ComicBoards.com as a fan-made poster based on a on the creator’s take on what the next of Nolen’s Batman movie should be.

Honestly, if this poster were a proper representation of what the real next movie would be like, I think many a Batman fan would be presently pleased. Kudos to the artist.

Following up the amazing news of Mega Man 9 being released in September, it appears that the folks at Capcom are starting even more hype to lead into the release. They’ve announced that the original Mega Man game will be released for the Virtual Console starting tomorrow, Monday August 4th. They also plan to re-release Mega Man 2 in early September.

Both games were originally released for the NES and Famicom in 1987 and 1988 respectively. Mega Man 2 had previously been released in Europe for the Virtual Console back in December of 2007.

Time to get back into playing the pixel goodness and reliving your childhood.

Swagshow, a venue not unlike our own here at Powet but limited to YouTube videos, managed to make their way down to E3 and capture some footage of the two new Castlevania games, Order of Ecclesia and Judgement.

Order of Ecclesia already had some footage released that’s been floating around the net, and this video just provides greater coverage of the Glyph system that the game uses, as well as a bit of dialogue between main character Shanoa and her mentor Barlowe. The Glyph system is interesting in that you can assign glyphs to each hand to attack with, using either the same glyph for both or different glyph for each. As has been mentioned before, the action will be combination of styles from previous recent Castlevania games such as Symphony of the Night or Dawn of Sorrow, with a traveling map similar to oldschool classic Simon’s quest.

As for Judgement, we only get to see a small snippet of playtime. Playable characters revealed are Simon Belmont, Maria Renard, and Alucard. Though gameplay seems fluid and the characters seem to move and attack well, the game thus far looks like a clone of Soul Calibur….with zombies. However, I will hold off on my contempt for the game until I get to watch the full thing when it’s released.

During some E3 exploits, Mortal Kombat producer and the overall frontman of the series Ed Boon sat down and talked alot about the upcoming Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe game.

More detail is explained by Boon, and shown in background during gameplay, about the differentiations between the Fatalities and Brutalities that the MK and DC characters have respectively. Also shown is a new component of the Kombat franchise called “Freefall Kombat”, wherein both warriors are in a state of pounding the hell out of one another whilst falling from a great height in an attempt to build a power meter to deliver a super move by the time they hit ground. An interesting concept, though seems a bit gimmicky to me.

What really excited me about watching the gameplay was twofold. Firstoff, the gameplay, though technically being 3D, has a much more 2D linear feel to it that reminds me of classic 2D MK games of old, without the motion confusion of more recent games. The other aspect was that many of the old signature character moves that have faded as the MK series as gone on seem to have returned. Scorpion has his classic-rendition of his Teleport back, while Sonya has both her Ring Toss attack and Scissor Grab move. These moves will come in handy for oldschool players who will be standing off with DC legends like Flash who works similar to Kabal but somehow seemingly more fluid, and Superman, who’s packed with heat vision, ice breath, and earthquake attacks.

Check out Gametrailer feature.

Though E3 thus far seems to be slightly more lackluster than previous years, it seems some diamonds are still managing to shine through the layer of mediocrity that has so far been shown.

Some rather impressive Resident Evil 5 footage has been shown out of E3, and while IGN has some clips to show off of the game along with a tentative release date of March 19th 2009, Gamersyde comes through with some high-resolution video for your viewing pleasure. Due to some bandwidth issues on their part, we’re unable to directly stream the video from here, but feel free to check out the videos *HERE*

Thus far, what we see is some good single-player action featuring good ol’ Chris Redfield, including tangles with the disgruntled locals, as well as some nasty confrontations with a rather imposing individual wielding a hulking sledgehammer/axe ready to bash your brains in. We also see some co-op play with your lovely female compatriot Sheva Alomar. From what I can tell, the environment and gameplay is strikingly similar to what we saw in Resident Evil 4, though game producer Jun Takeuchi states that enemies won’t be like the Ganados, and will be more intellegent.

This might be all we see of the game until it’s release next year, but so far everything is looking A-OK as far as living up to hype.

This fall will be a heavy time for Castlevania fanatics, as it’s been announced by Konami that both of the newest titles of the acclaimed series, “Order of Ecclesia” and “Judgement” will be released sometime later this year.

Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia, reported upon earlier, is the Nintendo DS title following upon the footsteps of previous games such as Symphony of the Night and Aria of Sorrow in terms of gameplay, as an action-adventure 2D platformer. It takes control of newcomer Shanoa as she searches for the lost Belmont family while battling the minions of Dracula.

Castlevania: Judgement, if you haven’t heard yet, will be a 3D fighting game; a first for the series. (for obvious reasons) Castlevania characters from all over the series continuum will be thrown together in a style leechingly-similar to Soul Calibur to fight one another in a (hopefully) non-canon battle royale. A even more shocking twist is the hiring of Death Note’s Takeshi Obata to do character designs, completely overhauling pre-existing designs mostly coming from series-usual Ayame Kojima.

This fall will surely prove to be an interesting turn of events for Castlevania fans. Many debates have already begun as to the fate of both games as numerous fans, while liking the usual-style Ecclesia is going with, denounce Judgement as straying too far from the Castlevania norm and claim it to be merely Konami’s cash-maker. Come this autumn, we’ll see what’s what when both games are launched to brave public scrutiny.

Fans of Blizzard’s Diablo series may now rejoice. After 8 years of anticipation since Diablo II’s release and wondrous results, the big boys at Blizzard finally broke the long silence about another sequel to the dark fantasy MMORPG – Diablo III.

Diablo first came out in 1997 for the PC, and after a fairly positive reception, Diablo 2 followed a few years after with resounding fan approval. It featured elements that would later be seen in Blizzard’s money-making giant, World of Warcraft. After the success for the first two games, word of a third Diablo game remained strictly amongst fans, as Blizzard seemed to keep a tight lip as to even remote possibilities of a game ever being produced, and truly the idea was overshadowed once World of Warcraft came out. However, with announcements last year of Starcraft finally getting a true sequel, whispers once again started to stir of Diablo’s resurrection. Thankfully, fruit has been borne of those desires.

The launched site features a surprising amount of eye-candy in terms of media and visual accounts of actual gameplay. Two classes have been released thus far on the site: the return of the Barbarian-class from Diablo 2, as well as a Witch Doctor-class that no doubt will be replacing the Necromancer from the previous game. New and old monster classes have been released in small doses as well, and no doubt additional character and monster classes will be revealed as time goes on.

Check out the site here – Official Diablo III Site

No announcements on a projected release date for the game have been given, though speculation suggests that it will be either before or after Starcraft 2, to give the respective giants their space.