We’re but weeks away from the beginning of the holiday release calendar with all manner of delightful electronic entertainments right around the corner. GDC and Gamescon are both happening in Europe over the next few weeks so we’ve got plenty of news to excite, titillate and attention grab in general. And yeah, maybe that article top image is a little larger than normal, but it's two steeped in awesome not to be on show.

I’m going to divide this weeks news into three categories for easier consumption. If consumption is difficult, choking occurs or digestive problems arise, please comment in the forums.

Cool

In the most exciting news of the week The Simpsons Tapped Out is coming back to iOS devices after a botched release and a LENGTHY hiatus. Hooray!

Second to that announcement Valve has announced a coop Horde type mode for Team Fortress 2. Launching soon the cooperative mode sees the two sides of the Team Fortress 2 universe teaming up against an army of rickety robot analogs of our familiar heroes.

There was also the announcement of Capcom’s new IP from developer Dontnod, the scifi game Remember Me. A game you might remember from teases last year when the game was called Adrift. In a nut shell it’s a dystopian cyberpunk third person adventure game set in a future version of Paris. You play as Nilin, a thief who steals and trades in other peoples memories, which have become a valuable commodity. The game begins with Nilin waking up in the Bastille prison, her own memory stolen, and she has to recover her own identity. The whole thing sounds super high concept. Remember Me is definitely the Watch Dogs of Gamescon, the title you should be officially hyped about. I can’t wait to see more.

Kickbeat is a dance controls based fighting game for the PSP Vita. Cool.

Hitman Absolutions new Contracts Mode lets you replay levels and kill everyone, creating scenarios for those kills and adding them as online missions for people to try and outplay you. Interesting.

Portal 2 has added coop to its level creator tool. Wooo.

Day Z, the Arma mod where you crawl on your belly for three hours and then die and have to start again (and find the experience completely awesome!) is getting a full retail release, that we know, but it’s also coming to consoles with the developers in negotiations right now. There’s also plans to expand the game considerably for a major release, creating instance dungeons in the form of buildings and underground bunkers that can be captured and rebuilt and reinforced to become bases.

Routine is a horror survival game that may pique an interest. Set in a base on the moon players have no HUD or menus, no crosshair and best of all (or maybe worst) no health packs or lives! It’s a permadeath game people. You ain’t got no second chances with this dance. Expect eerie moments of horror than pray on your isolation and paranoia. I’m expecting it to be like Amnesia, but in spaaaAAAAaaaace.

Here’s the launch trailer for Sleeping Dogs, something to tide you over until we get more GTAV information.

Sons of Anarchy show runner and star Kurt Sutter says the game based on the show was looking unlikely and that it, ‘looks like our big publisher blew us off’. Sutter is intent on only going ahead with a game adaptation if they can produce something of high quality, not a browser based or promotional type cash in. Which is a refreshing attitude to have really.

Interesting trivia, the N64 Goldeneye multiplayer was knocked together by one guy, in secret, and the game went to the publisher without Rare or Nintendo even knowing it was on there. Holy crap.

Here's a crazy long trailer for Lost Planet 3 that casts the game in a pretty favourable light compared to it's simplistic first outing and disastrous online focused sequel.

A trivia game on the Vita titled Smart As will be voiced by John Cleese. A man with such a masterful grasp of withering put downs that I imagine many people won’t be feeling very smart after playing the game.

The ‘Evil child’ genre is one of those creepier horror story genres where no one ever believes the other kids that little Eric or Emma is secretly a murderous demon, midget or genetically de-aged serial killer. In upcoming PC game Lucious you play as the murderous little bastard in question, a boy plagued by visions of the devil telling him to kill the various adults around him in his parents mansion. It’s an adventure game in which the puzzles end with the murder of a maid or grounds keeper around your parents swanky mansion. Definitely one of the more interesting, and very disturbing, upcoming games to watch for.

Aliens Colonial Marines has another trailer to remind you that yes, this is a game you really want to play at some undisclosed future time.

Mercenary Kings is a game getting Kickstarted by the devs behind the awesome Scott Pilgrim game. It’s a side scrolling 2D shooter with weapon crafting. That’s all you need to know really.

The Last of Us gets a Gamescon trailer that looks super creepy, and they’ve all looked pretty creepy so far.

Command and Conquer Generals 2 is no longer a game as we know it, according to EA it is now but the first ‘universe’ in an online freemium Command and Conquer game series. Later universe additions will include Red Alert and Tiberium.

Shane Butcher is selling his life for $3.5 million on ebay. His life includes a condo, three cars, a kayak, an extensive collection of games and game systems and the R U  Game chain consisting of three game retail stores. I’m considering selling my life for a couple of mill. Possible buyers must like huge  dogs, living in a town that tops 45 to 48 celsius for three months a year (seriously, you sweat while showering) and be willing to write for That Aussie Game Site for a salary to be negotiated at a later date (spoiler alert: the salary is rice crackers).

Firefall continues to look like a top game. The very latest developer diary goes into major detail on the many changes influenced by feedback from the beta.

Here’s a vid all about the guns of Halo 4.

In news for hybrid gamer/bibliophiles geeks like me, Dark Horse is releasing the English language version of the The Legend of Zelda: Hyrule Historia next January. No Zelda fan should be without a copy of this definitive guide to Hyrule.

Fifa 13 will have Move connectivity on the PS3 and a new feature called Match Day that incorporates real world football developments into the game development.

Origin is coming to Macs. Yay? You can download the new Simcity for Mac through Origin. Actual yay!

Mark of the Ninja looks really cool. You should download it in two weeks when it comes out on Xbox Live.

The Ouya has rounded out its kickstarter campaign at $8.5 million, which is a pretty staggering bit off start up cash and a lot more than their initial goal of $950 thousand. Pre orders are now open at the Ouya site to get one of the mini consoles next April. Personally I resisted temptation to pre buy a console through kickstarter as I’d prefer to wait and see what early impressions of the actual finished product are. While the whole Kickstarter thing was exciting I think it’s far too easy to get caught up in the hype and lose focus of the fact you’re buying a promise that there’s no guarantee yet will be kept. Also my wife hid my wallet again.

Media Molecule, the Little Big Planet people, are working on their next game Tearaway for the PSP Vita

Persona 4 Arena, the just released fight game based on a weird J-RPG and is apparently very good indeed, has been plagued by connectivity issues for online play. These issues have been patched all ready, within days of the games release, and will be corrected by a downloaded patch the next time you fire up the game. That’s some nice work their Lou-san. Likewise Hybrid, the shooter game from Scribblenauts creator 5^th Cell, was pulled from the Xbox marketplace briefly after severe sever issues with have also been resolved promptly. Nice to live in a world where these sorts of things get fixed so damn quickly, bring on the robot butlers.

Also, if you preorder Persona 4 Gold for the PSP Vita you’ll get a nice skin to wrap around your handheld.

Dead or Alive games have a story behind the jiggling and inappropriately timed moans. Here’s a trailer catching you up on the complicated plot for DOA5.

Until Dawn is a teen horror movie controlled with a Playstation Move controller. Fingers crossed for a rubber machete peripheral to stick on your pink controller. Time to get a move.

Killzone is coming to the Vita with Killzone Mercenary. Okay I am officially buying the hell out of a Vita. Gamescon announcements have sold me on the troubled handheld.

Not Cool

Blizzard was hacked last week. No doubt this is old news and everyone received one of the dozens of broadcast alerts and immediately changed your password, but juuuuuust in case you didn’t, go and change your password right now. The hackers in question made off with a lot of email addresses for users, as well as encrypted password information with theoretically they shouldn’t be able to use. So no actual financial information was taken, but if you’ve got a credit card attached to your Battle.net account as most people do it might be a good idea to check your records.

Assassins Creed 3 on PC has been delayed until November 20. Likely to give enough time to cram even more system crippling, exploit opening DRM into the game.

Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studio president Shuhei Yoshida, who must have a massive A4 sized business card, said to Official Playstation Magazine that they’re having a really hard time getting third party publishers to jump aboard the Vita train. Despite it’s often reported on drawbacks, the Vita is still the premiere powerhouse of hand held devices. Hopefully a few more units moved with the release of the Assassins Creed 3 and Call of Duty Black Ops 2 spin off games will create some love for the unit that can translate to greater developer support. Personally I’m all set to get the announced CoD Black Ops 2 Declassified Bundle Packed Vita for Christmas to play the Assassins Creed 3 game.

Where the hell is The Last Guardian? I know I’m busting all four nipples to play it, but Sony has announced zero progress on the game in almost a year and NOW the trademark for the games title has also lapsed. None of this actually means anything major, except perhaps a possible name change; but the total lack of information is a little anxiety inducing. Has development hell claimed another soul to torture? UPDATE: Sony says they’re working ‘very hard’ on it but there ‘are technical issues’ impeding development which they should sort out very soon, otherwise I will go ‘batshit crazy’.

For a brief fleeting moment Xbox Marketplace accidentally displayed the cost of items in the marketplace using actual local dollar amounts. This was visible both in the US and Europe. Unfortunately a few hours later the accidental option was changed back to MS Points. Although mysterious, and perhaps indicative of MS’s plan to drop their reviled and exploitative MS point system, the error was written off as just that with no details on a possible change coming soon. Not cool because everyone in the whole world except for Micrsoft entertainment division accountants hate Microsoft points. Dear Micrsoft, please kill this stupid, nasty system.

Castlevania’s been enjoying a bit of a renaissance recently, unfortunately its 3DS game Mirror of fate is being delayed back into 2013. You’ll have to find something else to whip until then.

Injustice Gods Among Us will add Catwoman to the Roster, this information goes under Not Cool because Mortal Kombat vs. DC was likely one of my most despised games of last year. Injustice has got to show me something really good to win me over.

Who Cares

This week in ‘Frivolous Lawsuits of Gamedom’, the developer Rebellion, makers of the excellent old and crappy new Aliens Vs Predator games, are suing developer Ironclad for their expansion to Sins of a Solar Empire which is subtitled ‘Rebellion’. As the developer has a trademark on the word. I thought we’d put crap like this to bed when we threw out that dickhead who trademarked the word Edge.

Hmm, Xcom: Enemy Unknown is going to have a head to head multiplayer mode. Probably the first disturbing thing I’ve heard about a game I’m otherwise literally shuddering with joy at the prospect of playing. I suppose worst comes to worst I can just ignore it.

Not quite exciting news, but Steam will be launching non game products over their service in September. Software on Steam will enjoy the same advantages of games over Steam, regular updates and cloud storage.

Final Fantasy XIV relaunch their whole game world this month with a substantially revamped system after the disastrous launch of the MMOJ-RPG last year.