Yes, this is the South, so you’ll come across a John Deere or two in your journey from Savannah to New Orleans, whacking scores of infected with frying pans and axes. Left 4 Dead 2 looks to retain most of the gameplay established in the original, adding new infected like the Charger and four all new Survivors. Also new: fiddles.

The sequel also adds a little more clear military involvement, as you can see in this raw gameplay footage. Those air strikes were hinted at in the game’s original teaser trailer, but we get to see them in action here. Also previously seen, but briefly, is the new pipe bomb effect, which sends some infected flying, rather than turning them all into red mist.

Take a gander and see if there’s anything we failed to point out during our hands-on time with Left 4 Dead 2. Let’s hope the new footage is more warmly received than the idea of a sequel itself.

I called Just Cause 2 the best thing I saw at E3. That’s a big call for a sequel to a so-so game. So, just in case you think I’ve gone mad, watch this.

It’s the same developer demo I sat through behind closed doors at E3. It runs for around 10 minutes, but it’s definitely worth watching the whole thing. As for why I thought this was “best in show”, well…I value innovation and originality in gaming as much as the next man, but sometimes, I just like to see things explode.

I don’t know about you, but that’s no Princess Zelda. Could it be, as so many are speculating, the living incarnation of the Master Sword?

Prepare to meet your frosty, carbonated maker in this E3 trailer for Telltale’s Tales of Monkey Island.

Brings back memories, doesn’t it? That’s Dominic Armato voicing Guybrush there. He’s the original voice actor for the character, and it shows. Who else could pull off a line like, “Here comes Guybrush Threepwood’s glowing sword of hot monkey vengeance!”?

No one, that’s who.

This being E3, there’s been a lot of impressive stuff on show. But nothing as impressive as seeing somebody play Ubisoft’s RUSE on Microsoft’s $20,000 touch-screen “Surface”.

What Is It?
Saw bridges the gap between the first two Saw movies, placing the player in the role of Danny Glover’s character, detective David Tapp. In the game, Tapp wasn’t killed when Zep shot him in the stomach, instead continuing his pursuit of Jigsaw until he winds up in the state he is at the beginning of the demo: with an explosive bear trap attached to his face.

What We Saw
The game can end as soon as it begins if you don’t follow the on-screen prompts, rotating the left stick to undo bolts and then hitting the two release switches using button presses. It gets your blood pumping and serves as an excellent introduction to this twisted game.

After that first harrowing sequence I guided Tapp through darkened corridors, solving puzzles and interacting with some of Jigsaw’s other victims, culminating in a fight and the revelation that after Tapp was shot, a key was sewn inside him that many of the other prisoners need to escape Jigsaw’s asylum. Shortly after that I entered a room filled with writhing bodies strapped to hospital beds, and the demo ended.

How Far Along Is It?
Much further along than it was when AJ saw it back in April, the graphics and textures have been vastly improved since Konami showed the title last. It’s still scheduled for October 2009, to coincide with the release of the next film.

What Needs Improvement?
A Few Tiny Glitches: I played through the PlayStation 3 demo, with missing textures and some missing sound clips. The Konami rep explained that the Xbox 360 version on the other side of the wall didn’t have the same problems, and they had run into a few snags with the PS3 version that were being worked on.

Unwieldy Combat: One would assume a police officer have a little more hand to hand combat training. The fight I was involved in was a clumsy affair with relatively unresponsive controls. Needs to be tightened up a bit.

Shock Therapy: While the first Saw movie subtly built towards a brilliant crescendo, the second seemed more occupied with providing shock after shock after shock. Unfortunately the game is more Saw II than Saw I. There needs to be a little more suspense built between gruesome events to keep the player from becoming used to it too quickly.

What Should Stay The Same?
Surprise!: While the shocks could benefit from better pacing, there are some generally creepy moments in the demo – moments that really make your stomach twist. Reaching into a toilet filled with syringes in order to find a fuse or walking on broken glass in bare feet…you can almost feel it, and it’s a hideous feeling.

Alone In The Dark: While it may seem too dark at times, wandering through such a well-rendered, disturbing environment using only a Zippo lighter to find your way adds an exquisite level of tension to the game play experience.

Reedulls And Poozles: While some of the mini-game puzzles take you out of the action, they were nicely balanced, relying on tension to enhance difficulty rather than having the player have to pull themselves too far out of the story to concentrate on picking a lock or finding a combination.

Final Thoughts
Saw is a genuinely creepy game, capturing the disturbing vibe of the film series, but is it too much? After finishing the demo I walked away feeling dirty, like I had done something wrong. It’s one thing to watch these events unfold passively on your television screen, but actively participating? It might just be more than my usually strong stomach can handle.

So, Mario and Luigi are Italian, but are they Italian stereotypes? Be warned, bad words and bad fake facial hair ahead!

Thanks, B W!

Mario is back and ready to circle around planets in spaaaaaaaaaace.

As we posted previously, Miyamoto said that the original plan was to “essentially create new variations of the worlds in Super Mario Galaxy.” But, over time, the developers have had so many ideas that Miyamoto estimates that 90% of the game’s levels are all new. The rest, he said, are levels from the original Mario Galaxy with different objectives.

The controls haven’t changed, but Mario’s been given new abilities via the addition of Yoshi and a drill item. Miyamoto also told Kotaku that “there’s something that might be kind of a little bit ghost like but still a little different.”

Left 4 Dead 2 is arriving almost a year to the day after the original of the first, partly because the team responsible went to work right away on the sequel, without taking the standard week off to recharge. Much of the core gameplay from Left 4 Dead will be intact in the sequel.

And at this point, when Valve still has yet to reveal—let alone tweak—the two remaining planned additions to the Special Infected. That’s on top of the already revealed Charger class, the half-Tank that addresses on of the problems with the original Left 4 Dead‘s game design.

Yes, there are problems. Characters stacking themselves upon each other during crescendo events, for example, backing into closets and behind gurneys and rendering zombie horde rushes moot.

The Charger will fix some of that, Valve’s Chet Faliszek says. Designed to break up tightly packed groups, then pounce upon one of the Survivors like a Hunter, the Charger is big and bulky, like a Tank, but doesn’t take nearly the amount the amount of gunfire to take down.

My handful of run ins with the Charger weren’t that dramatic. But the AI controlled Special Infected did take me down at least once, requiring my teammates to revive me. The Charger should be fun to play, as he’ll be added to the regular rotation in Left 4 Dead 2‘s Versus mode.

Faliszek wouldn’t say what the other two Special Infected types planned were, but teased that we’d get to hear more about one of them later this month, another later this year.

Also adding to the variety of Left 4 Dead 2 are the new melee weapons. Keep in mind it’s melee or main weapon; if you have a shotgun, then pick up an axe, say goodbye to that shotgun. Your arsenal hasn’t expanded beyond one main weapon and pistols. The melee weapons are definitely powerful though, so you’ll still be a deadly zombie slaying force when wielding a frying pan. Those close range attacks may become a beneficial addition to your Survivor squad, especially with the new, very noticeable change to regular infected.

They’re a little more challenging to kill. Shoot off an arm and they won’t just lie down. They’ll keep coming. Add to them the new regular Infected that wear haz-mat suits won’t burn when you set them alight with a Molotov cocktail and the rank and file zombie becomes a more serious challenge.

Also new are the extended crescendo events. In the demo we played, set in the level “The Parish,” that involved jumping out of a CEDA truck, then running a gauntlet of zombies while navigating a maze of chain link fences. The crescendo ended when we shut off a klaxon alarm at the top of some rickety looking scaffolding. It’s a tension filled new addition to the plant and shoot crescendo events from the first Left 4 Dead.

While not present in the demo we played, there are additions to the grenade class of weapons used in the game. It’s still strictly Molotov and pipe bomb for now, but Faliszek says those items will expand. The same for new ammo types. All that we played with were the new incendiary rounds—which thankfully set a Tank on fire with a little more reliability—but expect more.

Speaking of weapons, we played with all of them. The arsenal is similar in gun type to the original—sub machine gun, shotgun, semi-automatic rifle, sniper rifle, auto shotgun—but they feel different. I didn’t verify this with Valve, admittedly, but the Left 4 Dead 2 auto shotgun felt a little slower in its rate of fire than its Left 4 Dead equivalent.

Finally, the biggest change in L4D2 was its daytime setting. It made infected a hell of a lot easier to spot, especially those chunky Boomers. Perhaps too easy to spot. It’s not a change I’m all that excited about, really, because it takes away from some of the tension of the perennially dark original. But it will be, let’s say, interesting to see how it effects Versus mode.

In theory, there are a few more changes coming. Faliszek said Valve may be exploring “variations” to already established classes like the Hunter and Smoker, but expects they’ll retain their original visual design. And there may be other tweaks, including the option to double up on reviving incapacitated Survivors. All this is being playtested and iterated, but since Valve “adds very carefully,” these changes may not make it to the final version.

We’ll have more details from our Left 4 Dead 2 play session later. For now, enjoy some new screens.