Eidos/IO Interactive’s Hitman series has always been the thinking man’s stealth action game. You don’t into heavily fortified military bases to take out genocidal terrorists (most of the time), you are sneaking into public locations to eliminate a designated series of targets. Simply not being seen isn’t enough, you have to cover up evidence of your presence and eliminate any cause for suspicion. You don’t just hide in ventilation shafts and cardboard boxes. Often times you’ll have to disguise yourself and figure out how to sneak your weaponry onto the mission site. Your job isn’t just to kill your target and move on, you’ll also have to avoid (or reduce the possibility of) innocents being killed. After 2 successful games and a weaker third title, Hitman returns to top form, just in time for the next generation of gaming.

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THanks to G4TV, we have the first footage of the Ghostbusters game we only found out about 2 days ago.

Also new online is the official website, though it opens with a teaser trailer with no in game footage. It does however have some great screen shots of Slimer, Ray, and Mr Stay Puft.

The site also reveals some of the game’s story. You’ll be playing as a new recruit who will team with the original Ghostbusters team to take on the latest outbreak of the dead, undead, and recently dead.

The FOX Network has announced plans to move forward with new episodes of Family Guy without the participation of creator, writer, and star Seth Macfarlane. According to Reuters:

20th TV had no comment on the matter Tuesday but confirmed that it remains in production on new episodes. The first episode finished without MacFarlane’s blessing has been delivered to Fox. Sources said it is one of three very close to completion, with others in various stages of production.

Seth MacFarlane voices Peter, Brian, and Stewie. Its not mentioned whether Seth Green (who voices Chris, but is also the writer of Robot Chicken) or Alex Borstein (the voice of Lois and also a Family Guy writer) will appear or not. This is worse than Wrong Sounding Muppets.

If ringers are brought in, I hope fans do not tune in as a show of support for a show that lived and was brought back to life because of its fans. Also one would hope the episodes are re-recorded with the regular cast once the strike is over for future DVD releases.

GameInformer has revealed the cover of their next issue to include the mega-ton announcement of the ultimate untapped 80’s license: Ghostbusters.

Of course this is more than just a game cash-in. Harold Ramis and Dan Aykroyd are writing the games script and along with Bill Murray will reprise their roles as Dr. Egon Spengler, Dr. Raymond Stantz, and Dr. Peter Venkman. Of course this is no huge surprise since Aykroyd let slip to the Edmonton Sun back in February that Vivendi Universal had secured the rights and he was going to be involved. Around that same time we heard of an All CG Ghostbusters movie, but its hard to say if they were talking about the same thing or if that third movie is still happening.

Now lets get Sigourney Weaver, Annie Potts, and Ernie Hudson. And lets pull Rick Moranis out of retirement to bring back the brilliance of Louis Tulley.

It goes without saying that a sand box game where you roll around NYC taking calls to bust ghosts would be the ideal game style, but they’re not saying anything just yet. The actual story will have more info, and Game Informer subscribers will be able to access some of this material by logging on to the site this Friday.

UPDATE: Variety reports Ernie Hudson (Winston Zedemore), Annie Potts (Janine Melnitz) and William Atherton (Walter Peck) have all been cast. In addtion, Brian Doyle-Murray will play an unspecified charater.

Variety also specifies some of the developers. Terminal Reality will handle the PC, 360, and PS3 versions. Red Fly Studio will develop the PS2, Wii, and DS versions.

It would seem Marvel is attempting to catch up with the times. The entertainment giant is launching it’s digital comic library, for those of us who are too lazy to run out to our local comic book store and grab a copy of our favorite comic ourselves. Yay for perpetuating sloth in Americans even more so!

Starting today, Marvel is offering it’s “unlimited” comic library to the public at a rate of $59.88 a year (don’t know where that odd number comes from), or for $9.99 per month, and plan on showing off 250 of its current 2,500 comics for free to draw the customer in. Comics will be displayed in a high resolution format, that will be fool-proofed so users cannot download the comics to their own computer hard drives.

Because free programs like BitTorrent or Emule can’t do that for you already.

You can’t blame Marvel for trying to capitalize on it’s internet savvy customers. It plans on opening up a larger library of comics ranging from being released months ago to decades ago in the coming future, and I suppose it may have some obscure comics on its network that you may not be able to find elsewhere on the net. (though I doubt it)

The fall dashboard update for the Xbox 360 is running a little late this year. According to Official Xbox Magazine, it should happen on December 4th. Will it be worth the wait? Well parents will be able to use the new Family Settings to limit the time childen playing games. Thats enough Viva Pinata, little Jimmy. Sadly, this is unlikely to curtail the pint sized razor tongued demons I meet nightly in the Xbox Live lobbies of various M rated games. At least MS is trying.

Also coming with this update will be Xbox’s own virtual console! Original Xbox games will be available for 1200 Microsoft points ($15). The launch lineup will be the original Halo (obviously) Fahrenheit, Fable, Crimson Skies, Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath Of Cortex and Burnout 3: Takedown. Compatibility with Xbox Live is expected for those titles that supported it (Crimson Skies, Burnout).

Those in Europe will be pleased to find out they’re finally getting Video Marketplace. Now they too can finally download episodes of South Park for $2 a pop.

In a little more immediate news, Screwjumper is now Xbox Live Arcade’s 100th game. To celebrate this as well as 2 years of the service they’re promising a surprise new game next Wednesday that is a “sequel to Xbox Live Arcade’s most successful game.”
I haven’t checked the numbers in a while. That could be early hit Geometry Wars, the card game Uno, or even this year’s best selling classic arcade title Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

No matter what, there seems to be no shortage of downlaodable content on Xbox Live these days, which is frustrating since I’m still trying to clear Halo 3, haven’t touched Orange Box yet, and Assassin’s Creed comes out this week.

Transformation instrumental mixed by Tony Bacala

The transformation sequence has been sped up in the main video. You can see the full transformation in normal speed in a separate video attached after the jump. Keep in mind that its long and that is why it was sped up in the main video.

Correction: I refer to 20th Anniversary Optimus Prime as 25th Anniversary Optimus Prime. My bad.

If you are looking to purchase Ultimate Bumblebee, you can do so by going hereat Amazon.com.

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No, this doesn’t have anything to do with Dave Chappell, conscious hip hop music, or a brief Fugees reunion. However, Ultimate Block Party (known in Japan as Kollon) is a fun little anime-inspired PSP puzzle game brings back memories of Tetris Attack. You arrange colored blocks in groups of four to clear them out. As with many good puzzlers, things aren’t nearly that simple. When playing against a CPU or friend, the disappeared blocks are sent to the other player’s side, adversely affecting their game screen. Blocks can glue together, become harder to move, or even cover up the playing field. Clearing out blocks can earn magic squares, which give certain advantages such as changing all the blocks in a row to a certain color and blowing up clusters of blocks. As expected, you can chain together blocks and add on to your score. You play as one of 8 characters, but there are no real differences between them. It offers a Vs mode, an arcade mode, and a single player endless mode. There is also a campaign mode, but all it is is simply Arcade mode with just one character and some intro animations. In a nice little touch, the game offers Ad-Hoc play (something that wasn’t in the Japanese release), but good luck finding another player who has a copy of this game.

Ultimate Block Party may not be Lumines, and it doesn’t offer a whole lot in the way of game modes, but it’s still a solid title for casual gamers. It’s hard to find thanks to the lack of decent marketing around its release, but puzzle fans should definitely check this game out. Now that I think about it, this would make a good Xbox Live Arcade game.