We’ve only just finished icing our enemies as Johnny Klebitz in GTA IV: The Lost and The Damned. So it’s good to know Rockstar is on the case with its next installment of Liberty City–based  on download-able mayhem. The Ballad of Gay Tony has been known about for a while, but now it’s been dated for 29 October. Read on to find out how you can lay your hands on the next GTA IV hit.

GTA IV: The Ballad of Gay Tony is all primed and ready to go. Rockstar has said you can expects to grab the second lot of downloadable content from 29 October. Once again this is an Xbox 360 exclusive, with PS3 punters being kept in the cold.

The Ballad of Gay Tony will see you play as Luis Lopez, working for club impresario Gay Tony. We’re promised that means fighting for loyalty with family friends. Hopefully that’ll lead to excessive firefights, hitting missions with GTA IV’s put upon hero's Niko Bellic and making occasional trips to the strip joint.

Cartoon Network's new Thundercatsseries raises the bar for revamping old 80's cartoons. 

Save Toshi is an iOS port that comes to us from developer Nitako. In the game, you are tasked with getting pop star Toshi onto a dancefloor, as her dancing kills demons. The storyline is very "Japan," as are the voice effects that accompany each of Toshi's movements. The voice acting is actually quite annoying, but the game (mercifully) comes with an option to turn it off.

Unless the anime aesthetic appeals to you, there's a good chance that Save Toshi won't be your cup of tea. However, there are certain things you can appreciate about this game - specifically, its new twist on an older formula.

You move Toshi by throwing baseballs at the platforms she stands on, which are affected by different properties depending on what they're made of. Wood platforms break after two hits, metal platforms allow Toshi to slide on them, and stone is unbreakable. Like a giant Rube Goldberg machine, your task is to make everything fall in just the right order, so Toshi can be deposited on the dancefloor. Levels can be failed by flinging Toshi into the water surrounding the play area.

  

Levels can be rotated in 3D in order to hit blocks from all angles: this allows for some pretty creative solutions to puzzles, as there is likely more than one "correct" way of doing things. Each level gives you a "par" amount of balls that, if met, will give you a three-star rating. Beyond the star ratings, however, there doesn't seem to be any other scoring methods.

Save Toshi reminds me a lot of the Wii title Boom Blox; the physics puzzles and the "throw things so other things fall down" gameplay is quite similar. The game bases much of its success on simply adding an extra dimension to physics games like Cut The Rope, where the levels can be added en masse and players can be kept occupied for ages with very little maintenance needed.

And, for what it's worth, the game plays pretty well. Besides a few levels where blocks never seem to act the same way twice, the game has a lot of inventive puzzles for players to go through. If anything, the lack of consistency is its worst quality, gameplay-wise: for some, being unable to perform the same results twice in a row, despite hitting the same place, will be infinitely frustrating.

  

However, for all the good the game does, it's hobbled by an over-aggressive ad model that just left me with a bad taste in my mouth. The game is free and includes 25 levels; the rest of the content can be unlocked by a "coins" system, which is similar to GLU Mobile's model for their titles, like Gun Bros. You can either pay to unlock coins (which then can be used to buy level packs) or install apps from a list that will give you coins. Apps that require you to pay to buy them give you more coins than their free counterparts.

So, if you want to progress beyond the game's 25 initial levels, you are going to shell out money, or load your phone full of apps you might never use. This isn't something I enjoy. With Gun Bros, there was at least a measure of a game to be played without the purchase of "war bucks;" here, if you're done the 25 levels, you won't have anything else to do.

The game also advertises between levels (which are skippable) and urges you to buy the complete version through notifications, which many see as a big no-no. While the latter only seems to occur when you exit the game, it's still very annoying.

The entire game can be unlocked (with ads removed) for $1.99, which seems like a fair price for 125 levels. However, getting people to buy what you're selling shouldn't come at the expense of how the game plays. Save Toshi could have released a free version supported by ads (the "Angry Birds" method)  or a paid version that gives players a "clean" version. Having us wade through a "freemium" model just seems a bit pointless, and just serves to get as much money from non-paying users as possible.

This ultimately hurts the experience - since you can't buy the level packs straight away, you'll need to force yourself through 25 levels of ad-skipping and notification-clearing until you have the opportunity to play without. That's just bad design.

One of the key rules I’ve come across as I cover gaming news for Gamebandits is that the higher the level of anticipation or fan loyalty to a brand, the higher the likelihood of hoaxes, rumors, and speculation. Take the case of Grand Theft Auto 5 for example. Grand Theft Auto is the granddaddy of open world action games and has a massive installed fan base. Every time there’s a new installment in the works, the videogame blogosphere lights up with innuendo, hoaxes, rumors, and rank speculation. Ever since San Andreas, there’s just something about the franchise that triggers a lot of wishful thinking, hopes, and speculation.

The supposed development of Grand Theft Auto 5 is no exception. According to some internet sources there was a Grand Theft Auto 5 pre-order at e-retailer Gamestation UK. The report even came with a supposed picture of the pre-order. Not surprisingly, the supposed pre-order lit up the gaming blogosphere until an email from a supposed Gamestation assistant manager called the picture a fake. The email says that there were some inconsistencies in the pre-order receipt which would qualify it as a forgery.

The first issue of the suppose assistant manager pointd out is that Grand Theft Auto 5 was never in the store’s system at all. He checked the store’s inventory at the date of the purported slip (July 1 2011) and Grand Theft Auto 5 was not in the store’s system. The second issue the email writerz claims is that pre-orders are arrived at using data collection for the interested levelz. Since there’s no info on this so far, there shouldn’t have been a pre-order. Also, there’s not amounts collected when normally pre-orders have to be paid for. Regardless of whether the email is real, the issues it raises are and point solidly to a hoax.

»The Death of Osama bin Laden« stellt die Ereignisse vom 1. Mai in Abbottabad, Pakistan nach.Die Entwickler von Kuma Games haben den Angriff auf Osama bin Ladens Haus in Abbottabad, Pakistan und seinen Tod als Videospiel verarbeitet. In »The Death of Osama bin Laden« steuert der Spieler einen Navy SEAL – die US-Spezialeinheit hatte die Geheimoperation »Geronimo« am 1. Mai 2011 durchgeführt.

Das Spiel ist die 107. Folge der kostenlosen Reihe Kuma\War 2. Seit 2003 werden dort aktuelle Ereignisse wie der Kampf gegen die Taliban oder die Gefangennahme von Saddam Hussein in eigenen Episoden abgehandelt. Wie bei den vorherigen Projekten erwarten die Entwickler auch dieses Mal wieder Proteste, allerdings sehen sie Kuma\War 2 als legitime Ergänzung zur Berichterstattung im Fernsehen und in den Print-Medien.

»Bei der Wiedergabe von realen Begebenheiten müssen wir gründliche Nachforschungen anstellen und mit den Quellen reden um alles richtig zu machen«, erklärt der Projekt-Leiter Mike Thompson. »Es ist nicht schön, einem Designer nach einer durchgearbeiteten Nacht zu erklären, dass er ein Modell noch einmal ganz neu erstellen muss weil jemand einen seltsamen Heck-Rotor gefunden hat – aber das ist nun einmal notwendig.«

Kuma Games-CEO Keith Halper ergänzt: »Da wir alles in 3D nachstellen, müssen wir Details wie Entfernungen, Höhen, Vegetation, Einrichtung usw. berücksichtigen und ins Spiel einabeun. Geräusche wie bellende Hunde, kreisende Helikopter und Explosionen sind ebenfalls wichtig.«

So ganz genau nimmt es Kuma Games mit Realität dann aber auch wieder nicht: So werden die Bewohner des Hauses bei jedem Durchgang neu platziert. Außerdem sind im Gegensatz zu den tatsächlichen Begebenheiten im Spiel fast alle Kämpfer und auch bin Laden selbst bewaffnet und erwidern das Feuer.

Neben Kuma\War 2 entwickelt Kuma Games neun weitere Serien die ebenfalls im Episoden-Format aufgebaut sind. Einzelne Ableger wie WWII\Experience, I, Predator oder Mobsters! werden in Zusammenarbeit mit TV-Kanälen wie The History Channel, Biography Channel und Animal Planet erstellt.