Rock Band Unplugged

Births, an interview with Harmonix, Castlevania: Harmony of Despair reviewified, hands-on with the latest Red Dead Redemption DLC, and an important lesson on how to talk shit in Street Fighter. Oh, and we've got another FREE GAME to give away....

There are two kinds of good game. There are the good games that come out, get fine reviews, sell adequately, and then fade into well-regarded obscurity: your Vortex, your Space Station Silicon Valley, your Land Stalker (a perplexed, blank stare is the correct response here). And then there are the good games that have a lasting impact on the medium. These games aren't necessarily any better, but they get talked about more often because they defied – and redefined – our expectations. Red Dead Redemption may be such a title. It's the first time a cowboy-themed game has transcended the resolute OK-ness of Sunset Riders, Mad Dog McCree and their ilk, capturing audiences without compromising its sand-and-saddles chops to prove that Westerns were a viable game genre all along.

But now that that point's finally been made, there are plenty of other film genres for games to try adapting next. Some haven't been touched since valiantly failed lo-fi efforts; others have never really been given a day in court. Maybe it's time to put the next Space Marines In Space title on the back-burner and try plugging a controller into one of these under-represented movie styles...

When it comes to heavy metal, one of the pioneering “rock gods” is Judas Priest lead singer Rob Halford. These days, he has his own clothing line and is helping new generations find music through games like Activision’s Guitar Hero and MTV Games’ Rock Band. Halford also starred in his first videogame last year, playing General Lionwhyte and The Baron in Tim Schafer’s Brutal Legend.

It's a rare occurrence nowadays, but every once in a while, a game you’ve never even heard of comes along and absolutely blows you away. Sometimes it's a little indie gem that didn't get enough promotion. Other times, what appears to be a quick cash-in turns out to be an awesome game.

Is everyone loving The Beatles: Rock Band? In this new age of lifelike mo-cap, crisp digital audio and video games being more mainstream than ever, we’re finally seeing the most famous rock gods and musical heroes take to the polygonal stage in games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero.

Short of surgically grafting a plastic guitar, bass and drums onto our limbs there’s no way we thought Rock Band on PSP would ever work. How wrong we were. Wisely mimicking their previous games Frequency and Amplitude, developers Harmonix have mapped different notes onto the handheld’s face buttons, with the shoulder buttons switching instruments. We’ve been playing the game a fair bit recently and can honestly say

This week's topics:

Top 7… E3 announcements you missed – the stories and games that slipped right past us.

Nintendo’s E3 press conference – was a lot like last year’s, and we’ve got the audio evidence.

Prototype Super Review – Mikel finally admits he accepts bribes from Microsoft. And Activision. Oh and Sony. Probably Nintendo too.

And more!

Quote of the week: "Rrrreeeeeeeerreeeeeeeeerrrrrr."