The first video shows how a typical battle will play out - fairly standard Square-style stat shuffling with combos, breakers and whatnot. I always find these confusing to watch but this seems particularly frenetic. You can see a couple of characters using the game's new Quick Time Event system to execute special attacks with timed button presses.

Nice rawk soundtrack too. Assuming that is actually from the game.

The next video is altogether less stressful - but no less confusing.

Protagonist Rush Sykes runs around a marshland, splashing through pools of water and reeds and weaving in and out of what looks like a herd of giant levitating pink shrimp.

It looks pretty. The shrimp notice him. Fade to black.

Ok then!

Sonic Chronicles: Bioware Developer Diary
Sonic Chronicles Trailer Shows Combat

Gametrailers TV just secured themselves the first in-game footage from the game. The bad news? It won't be airing until May 9 at 1 a.m. The good news? The footage, which features Marcus Fenix, includes a special introduction by bunny-loving Epic game designer Cliff Bleszinski.

Based on the 1,040 responses to the DGD2 survey, I have ranked the top 10 emotions with their average score out of 5 to get a rough-and-ready estimate of the popularity of various emotions. This isn't a strict scientific measure, as such, but the highest scoring emotions are those for which the majority of people not only recognised having that emotion while playing games, but recognised it enhanced their enjoyment.

Top Ten Videogame Emotions [Only a Game]

GameTrailers has exclusive new footage of some new levels of the upcoming Ratchet and Clank for the PS3. Being a self professed fan of the series and a PS3 owner hungry for some decent games on the system, I'm quite looking forward to this game's release. All the clips I've seen of it have looked great and they just keep getting better. As an added Saturday bonus, I've included a second clip after the jump of another new area, the Arena Challenge .

Hot of the presses at GameTrailers comes this "Massive Montage" of new Assassin's Creed footage. Every time I watch gameplay from this I am always impressed by the free running. It's like Prince of Persia on crack. Needless to say, I can't wait for this game.

The folks at 1Up get a first look at Silent Hill 5 and man does it look great. From what I can see in the clips of the game shown throughout this piece, it's everything you are going to want from Silent Hill on a next gen platform. The scenes of Silent Hill changing to evil Silent Hill are delivered as promised, in real time while you are actually playing the game and draws directly from the method used in the Silent Hill movie. While it may have had it's faults, the film version did have a lot of interesting ways of treating the environment which translates quite nicely into the video game format. It's also nice to see that they are going back to the elements that made SH 2 the best in the series and steering away from the sometimes clunky mechanics of SH 4. If you are a Silent Hill fan, you're going to love this clip. What are you waiting for? Press play!

The Halo 3 Beta is nearly upon us and for those of you not lucky enough to get invited or unwilling to buy the awesome Crackdown for an invite, a slew of new videos have landed so you can see what you're missing.

All shall see Master Chief and fall to their knees. The mighty Halo shall rule the world. You will go out and purchase Halo 3 when it finally reaches the stores. You are getting very sleepy.... Flynn De Marco

More videos after the jump

Here we have #9 in a series of FF XII Revenant Wings gameplay trailers. The game looks like it will fall right in line with all the other excellent FF titles we've had thus far. Being new to the whole Final Fantasy milieu, I'm finding that I enjoy the handheld titles better than their console counterparts. Especially Final Fantasy X2. God, I hated that game... Flynn De Marco

Finally, some gameplay from Umbrella Chronicles. It's great to see the old tried and true mansion making a comeback, although it seems to be much more zombie infested than the last visit. The "light gun" aspect of the game actually intrigues me, although I know some people would rather see it go the way of Duck Hunt. I've always been a fan of rail shooters like House of the Dead and I'm also a terrible aim with a regular controller, so the ability to actually point and aim is much more my speed. Besides, I'm always up for a trip down a zombie infested memory lane. Flynn De Marco

Wow, this looks fun, though I'm not sure yet if I'm going to like it less or more than Supreme Commander. Why do they have to bunch these amazing RTSes together? Brian Crecente

This sorta looks like the old X-Man arcade game but with better graphics... and anthropomorphic turtles. I'm sure it will be fun, just not really revolutionary. Brian Crecente

While the clip is a little fuzzy, it does give us another look at some of the gameplay for the upcoming God of War 2. IGN has posted a bunch of new screens and hi-res videos, including some interviews and more gameplay. I've watched this a couple of times and for some reason, I can't keep my eyes on the action. All I keep staring at is that creepy statue thing that keeps peering through the windows. It really gives me the willies, like something out of an old Ray Harryhausen Sinbad movie. No, not Sinbad the comedian, Sinbad the sailor. Flynn De Marco

Bunch of new God of War II media [IGN]

Game Designer and Gamasutra writer, Ernest Adams has published an interesting article on the console wars from the perspective of a designer. It seems that the PS3, while undoubtedly being the technically superior console, is less challenging to the people who create the games.

From a design standpoint, however, the PS3 is evolutionary, not revolutionary. It doesn't change much about our job. It makes it easier to design the same stuff we've always designed, but it doesn't encourage us to try anything particularly new.

The Wii on the other hand, provides artistic inspiration through it's control scheme.

Nintendo has bet the company on a radical new approach to gaming. Gameplay, they said, is really about interactions, not graphics. The Wii Remote gives players new things to do, which means it challenges us designers to come up with those things.

He goes on to predict that the Wii and the PS3 will be this generation's console wars "big two" leaving the earlier launched Xbox 360 in the third place slot previously occupied by the Gamecube.

With all the hype that surrounded the launches of these two consoles, it's interesting to see how the chips all seem to be falling in Nintendo's court, at least for the time being. Consumers and designers love the Wii, so where does that leave the PS3? Will it come on strong in the next year with a glut of really amazing games, pulling ahead in the race when the "novelty" of the Wii subsides? Or will the developers and designers spend more time creating new and innovative ways to use the Wii's control scheme, resulting in more intriguing gameplay?

Graphics vs. Gameplay: The Eternal Struggle. Which will really win out in the long run? Flynn De Marco

The Designer's Notebook: PS3 versus Wii - The Designer's Perspective [Gamasutra]

I swear I'm going to buy a tripod one of these days, until then suffer through my latest gameplay video. Sorry. Brian Crecente

Not sure on this. Don't get me wrong, I'm all about lopping off giant, city-smashing robot arms, but Gundam games can only be judged after playing them for a few weeks. The line between royal sucktatude and awesomenessatude is very fine. Any anticipation for this? It's not really on my radar as far as PS3 games. Brian Crecente

Cool concept, but I'm not sure if it's really going to hold water. I mean, I love the idea of having B-list musical celebrities pick apart your performance after a bit of Karaoke, but they don't seem to say much that reflects on the gamer's actual performance and why they hell are they talking about stage performance? You can't control that at all. I would love to see the game reduce someone to tears though, that would be hilarious. Brian Crecente

I am really impressed with the look of Playstation 3 games so far. First Call of Duty 3, which is simply sublime, and now Tony Hawk's Project 8, which looks pretty damn hot too. Brian Crecente

Holy cow, Call of Duty 3 just hit my most wanted list for the Playstation 3. The game looks amazing, and that with janky YouTube pixelizing our vid. I really like how you have to use the Sixaxis to do things like set detonations and that blur effect after a bomb goes off. Wow, just wow. Videographer Richard Blakeley tells me the game is simply amazing and he's not even a gamer. Brian Crecente

The gameplay concept for Crackdown looks kinda cool, but it seems like there's still a lot of rough edges that need smoothing out. This game really isn't on my radar. Is it on yours? Brian Crecente

Today is full of videos, for which I apologize. It's just what the feeds doled out last night.

Brand new as of the 14th, this Red Steel trailer is full of the new control scheme, good music (hopefully in-game), and and undoubtedly exaggerated gestures on the part of the "gamer". But this footage gets me stoked about being given more opportunity to play video games in a way that utilizes more than my thumbs.

But check out the totally un-bushido way that the hero stabs that ninja once he's already disarmed. For shame.

The gleaming white mini-katana (I know it has a real name but none of my Japanese-speaking friends are talking to me) in the background hints at a custom wiimote from my dreams. Eliza Gauger

Click here for full-quality version of the above video [IGN]

I'm about a far as you can get from being a fan of the Rayman stuff. In fact, I think it would be fair to say I hate Rayman... to death. I've never liked any of the Rayman games, ever, but this Wii Rayman game is kinda cool. It's essentially a series of fun mini-games. And by fun, I mean milking cows, spraying "carrot juice", shooting plungers and throwing cows. That's fun. Oh, and there's Madonna music, sweet! Brian Crecente

Telltale Games, developers of the upcoming Sam & Max Episode One: Culture Shock, have posted three gameplay videos in their blog.

Not all sound effects and graphics are complete, but you can get a feel for the dialogue and voice acting. I'm not sure what happened to the old voice actors, but the new Max is extremely irritating. Sam is passable.

I do like how the camera cuts to Max when he's talking.

The car-driving minigame looks fun as hell, even in the unfinished state we see in this video.

Hit the jump for that video and one other.

Eliza Gauger

Thanks Luigi.

More on these videos here [Telltale Games]

I wasn't too impressed with the demo for Call of Juarez. I love, love, love western shooters. (Hence my mini addiction to Gun.), but the game just didn't seem to gel for me.

Part of the problem was that the game was acting really screwy. I couldn't get any of the doors to open and the town appeared to be deserted, so it didn't make for much fun.

The graphics seemed OK, but nearly as crisp as you would expect a PC game still in development to be.

I uploaded this video showing someone else having the same sorts of door problems I was having. Brian Crecente

Thanks, GayGamer. Steaming fresh from Deutchland! I find this one a little hard to follow, maybe because of the YouTube fuzz, I dunno. But I love the expressionless female voice, and the feeling of vague silliness over the whole thing. Good atmosphere! Eliza Gauger

Sadly, when they say contextual sword fight combat, they don't mean Die by the Sword. But at least it looks like Arkane has upped Half-Life 2's ante with the Source engine, though.