Check out this new trailer for Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands that highlights actual gameplay along with developer commentary

“…if Deathwing's actions create an opening into the Abyssal Maw, nefarious and honorable factions alike will seek out the fabled weapon carried by Neptulon. Whoever secures the artifact will have control over the world's seas, a power that perhaps no one, not even members of the Horde or the Alliance, should possess.”

Final Fantasy 13 fans rejoice! The game we have been waiting 3 years for has finally hit stores today. Did you get your copy at midnight? Personally I’m waiting on my copy from GameFly before I purchase it due to the mixed reviews it’s received thus far. At any rate, I look forward to playing it and giving it a thorough review!

What are your thoughts of Final Fantasy XIII so far? Do you feel it deserves the reviews it’s received? Sound off in the comments!

Blizzard is definitely not holding back information, as Eyonix on the US World of Warcraft forums posted Monday a preview to the new Mastery system for their 3rd expansion, Cataclysm. This is hot off the post he made about the stat system overhaul a few days ago. Instead of posting the entire thread here, I will just give an overview of the new system.

The Mastery systems primary goal is to eliminate the need to spec valuable talent points into boring choices in a specific tree. For example, if you are a Destruction Warlock, you always put points into Bane, which decreases your Shadow Bolt casting time and a few other spells by like a half a second. How boring is that! That is 5 talent points you HAD to use just to get to the more fun talents in the tree. Now with the Mastery system, the more talent points you spend in Destruction, for example, the more spell damage you will get and/or it may also reduce your casting time anyway. With this system, you now no longer need to spend talent points in specific boring choices because you will get them by just spending points period. Makes sense?

Here is an example of how Mastery would work for a Holy Priest:

Holy Priest
For each talent point spent in the Holy tree, the priest also gets:

• Healing – Improves your healing by X%.
• Meditation – Improves your mana regeneration from Spirit in combat. This would likely replace the existing Meditation talent from the Discipline tree, which many Holy priests consider to be a “must-have.” Regeneration will also probably be determined by whether you are in or out of combat, and not the “five-second rule.
• Radiance – Adds a heal-over-time effect to direct heals, such as Flash Heal. Mastery on gear would boost this bonus, and no other talent tree would grant it.

The other cool thing about Mastery is that it will be on high-end gear as well. It’s still a work in progress, so stay tuned as more information about this cool new system comes out!

I’ve been playing the Blur beta for about a week now, but decided to wait until it was open to everyone before I gave my impressions. Blur is looking to be a solid multiplayer racing game, but I do have some changes and adjustments I would like to see.

If Burnout Revenge and Mario Kart Wii had a baby, it would be Blur. Boasting a 20-player multiplayer matchup with slick graphics and plenty of cars to choose from, Blur is just plain fun to play.

However, I do have some issues with the game. First, the controls are not as responsive as i would like it to be. Turning a wide corner constantly causes you to hit the wall unless you slow down; and in this game you do not want to slow down. Maybe if drifting worked similar to Burnout Revenge or Burnout Paradise this wouldn’t be a problem. Matter of fact, even in Mario Kart drifting was done better than in Blur. Drifting isn’t impossible, but it doesn’t benefit you to drift since it slows you down also.

Blur is an arcade racer at heart. The levels shown in the beta are closed circuits, but it isn’t know if there will be more open stages come release. If you ever driven in a real go-kart at an amusement center and had a blast, then you will love the track design in Blur. The tracks are themed well, with a track representing downtown Tokyo and a track taking you through a desert.

Other than my gripe with cornering, I also am not fond of how power-ups are collected and where they are placed. I am not sure if I like the fact that power-ups are not random. The same power-up will be in the same spot every time. I feel they should be randomly generated after every lap. But that’s just me.

Of course plenty can change from now until release in May. So far I’ll be buying Blur when it releases, with or without the gripes I have mentioned being fixed. There is no other racing game out there like Blur, mixing traditional arcade racing with vehicular combat similar to Full Auto from Sega.

FourZeroTwo tweeted Monday afternoon that Modern Warfare 2 has hit 25 million unique players. He also went on to mention that this week we will get some DLC news for Modern Warfare 2. Stay tuned!

Be sure to vote for your favorite Oscar-nominated movies on your Xbox 360 dashboard! When you log into Xbox Live on your 360, look under the Spotlight category then look for the banner for your opportunity to vote on who you think should win big at the Academy Awards.

As of this posting 92,000 Xbox Live users voted, and so far Avatar is way ahead of the votes at 40%! The nominees are:

• Avatar 40%
• Blind Side 9%
• District 9 14%
• An Eduation 0.2%
• Hurt Locker 9%
• Inglorious Basterds 15%
• Precious 2%
• A Serious Man 0.6%
• Up 7%
• Up In The Air 1%

As you can see, there is no question that the $2 billion dollar blockbuster Avatar is the Xbox Live fan favorite to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards.

Opening weekend for Battlefield: Bad Company 2 isn’t looking too good for EA, or is depending on how you look at it. There has been some server issues causing some downtime due to the enormous amount of players killing each other online. EA posted on their blog that they are seeing an impressive 400% increase in players on their servers compared to any other Battlefield release and that the Xbox 360 was severely impacted Sunday afternoon. Things should begin to stabilize after the weekend is over, but as for next weekend we’ll see if the momentum for BF:BC2 continues.

Looks like Portal 2 will be coming out for both Xbox 360 and the PC, thanks to Game Informer’s new April Cover art. The Game Informer issue will boast 12-pages of insight into the sequel of Portal, a game noteworthy of its use of…uh..portals and came in The Orange Box.

Although details are scare at the present, Portal 2 will release this holiday season and will excitedly have 2-player co-op. I’m sure more information will come out when GDC arrives and the April Game Informer hits stores.

Check out this gameplay trailer for Just Cause 2, which shows off the amount of freedom in the game.