Late Night Consoling

Publisher RedOctane announced today that developer Harmonix will be delivering a sequel to the award winning Guitar Hero (PS2) towards the end of this year. IGN has an interview with Red Octane's John Tam, discussing some of the upcoming game's new features.

- Each song will have two distinct audio input channels. Rather than multiplayer consisting of trading off the lead channel, it might consist of lead and bass, or lead and rhythm, which are played simultaneously by the players.
- There will be a practice mode, allowing players to focus on particularly difficult sections of a solo or lead.
- With the increased fame of the Guitar Hero franchise will come previously unobtainable licensed songs.
- The guitar peripheral from the original game will work with the sequel.

Guitar Hero II will be shown at E3 in some form, and will hit PlayStation 2 this November.

THQ announced today that a followup to Pandemic Studios' 2005 alien-centric shoot-em-up Destroy All Humans (PS2, Xbox) is currently in development. Players will reassume the role of protagonist Crypto 137 along with more weapons, abilities, and game features than before. "We are pulling out all the stops for the sequel," stated Pandemic president Josh Resnick, "adding multiplayer co-op, five new open-worlds to explore and the same irreverent humor that was a hallmark of the first Destroy All Humans! game."

Destroy All Humans 2 will ship for PlayStation 2 and Xbox later this year.

Bethesda Softworks has released its newest piece of downloadable content for its acclaimed The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (X360, PC). Currently, the Orrery, which contains a new Mages Guild-related quest, is available only for owners of the Xbox 360 version of the game, though it is promised to be "coming soon" on the official Oblivion Downloads page.

Following the general controversy over the price of horse armor (200 Marketplace points, or $2.50 on Xbox 360; $1.99 on PC), the price point has been reduced for the Orrery. It is available for 150 Marketplace points, or $1.88 on Xbox 360; the PC version will be sold for $1.89. This new pricing scheme should hold for the eventual third piece of content as well, the Wizard's Tower.

Rooster Teeth Productions, the team behind well loved internet machinima series Red vs. Blue and The Strangerhood, will be screening some of the its best sketches as the San Francisco International Film Festival. The festival runs from April 20 to May 4, with Rooster Teeth's offerings screening on April 23, April 25, and May 03. Members of the cast and crew will be on hand for question and answer sessions following the screenings.

Marc Ecko's Getting Up, the graffiti-centric video game developed by The Collective under the direction of fashion designer, had its movie license acquired last year by MTV Films. Now, the film has been assigned two screenwriters, according to the Hollywood Reporter: Sean O'Keefe and Will Staples, whose only two writing projects have been collaborations on two upcoming films: The Northmen and King Tut. Ecko is co-producing the film along with MTV producers David Gale and Van Toffler. A director has yet to be selected.

Variety also reports that Sienna Guillory will return to the play the part of Jill Valentine in the third Resident Evil film, Resident Evil: Extinction. The film will be written by Paul W.S. Anderson, who also wrote the first two entries in the series and directed the first. Taking director duties will be Russell Mulcahy, who directed the first two Highlander films.

Following up on promises to address freezing issues with the Xbox 360 version of Kush Games' Major League Baseball 2K6, 2K Sports has issued two official workarounds for the problem: 1) simply remove or do not use the hard drive, or 2) load up three Xbox 360 games, each to at least the main title screen, before attempting to play MLB 2K6.

2K continues to work on a permanent downloadable patch to resolve the issue.

GameSpot has a Q&A regarding Namco's Tekken: Dark Resurrection (PSP).