Joining Hendrix, Ozzy and others, Sting will be walking around the virtual concert halls of Guitar Hero World Tour. According to the press release, you can play as Sting during the vocal career "or play alongside him" in the Police track, "Demolition Man." Additionally, three songs from Tool (who are not bringing their likenesses to the game) have been confirmed: Parabola, Schism, Vicarious.

We now know about 65 tracks of the reported "over 85" tracks. With about seven weeks to go before its October 26 North American launch, when do we get to learn the rest of the tracklist? More importantly, where's our virtual likeness of Lars Ulrich?

Intel is rumored to be heavily courting Microsoft for inclusion of its high-performance GPU Larrabee in the next-generation Xbox, according to The Inquirer. Its source states that Intel is willing to make a lot of major concessions, the logic being that inclusion in the console would compel game makers to develop for the chipset, thus increasing interest in the consumer PC market and making a dent in the GPU market dominated by ATI and Nvidia. It's certainly not a far-fetched scheme; we'd be surprised if Intel didn't at least make a pitch to Microsoft, regardless of the actual terms.

The Xbox 360 currently uses a PowerPC-based CPU from IBM and a GPU designed by ATI. Should this rumor prove true, our first reaction is "cool" and our second is to wonder about backwards compatibility, which became an issue given that the original Xbox's GPU was based on a different, Nvidia-based architecture in comparison to its successor.

[Via Tweaktown; Thanks, Tigerj]

Microsoft is running an "Extended Play Download Days" promotion between now and the end of October, with select downloadable content discounted for six Xbox 360 titles. Sure, half of the promotion consists of Beautiful Katamari accessories and stages, but we've also got Forza Motorsport 2, Mass Effect, Guitar Hero 3, Lost Odyssey and a deep discount for Oblivion Shivering Isles (from $30 to $20). Not coincidentally, today also marks the first day of the new Xbox 360 price drop.

Last week during PAX 2008, we sat down with Hothead COO and Penny Arcade Adventures Producer Joel DeYoung as he guided us through Episode 2 and improvements to the engine. The gist of it is: if you liked Episode 1, you'll like Episode 2 that much more. Here's the rundown from our talks:

• Highlighting points of interest has been made easier! "If you have your proximity putting you close enough to 2 or 3 things, you can slide through that with bumpers," said DeYoung.
  
• There are now difficulty levels, including an Insane Mode (unlockable only after beating the game). Special collectibles and pickups are only available if you play Insane Mode. Comparatively, Episode 1's difficulty is "a little easier" than medium.
• All the weapons have been replaced. Tycho gets a shotgun, Gabe has new fist upgrades and your player now possesses -- wait for it -- a hoe! Also changed are the special attack minigames.
  
• You now have, among other new items, a revive potion. Healing won't be enough to bring your troops back to life. "Just adds a little bit of depth to it," said DeYoung.
• The real-time reaction for defense has been made more obvious (e.g. "Block!" now appears when you need to push block), but nothing analogous for attacking has been added.

More after the break.

We were given one hour with Fallout 3 at this year's PAX, and we don't mean some pared down, nerfed, demo-ized level; this was the full version. Not only that, but the Bethesda folks showed it to us in the tricked out Fallout 3 Airstream Trailer, complete with a nuclear family peering in.

Lead designer Emil Pagliarulo started us out roughly an hour into the game, when you exit the vault for the very first time. We missed the whole "growing up" phase in order to rush right into the action. We didn't mind. but what of our first 18 or so years? Maybe you start out on the cellular level, and fight your way out in a glorious Spore/Fallout hybrid. Your guess is as good as ours.

Square Enix's proposal to buy an Itagaki-less Tecmo has been rejected. According to Reuters, the Ninja Gaiden and Dead or Alive publisher instead said that it would merge with Koei, making it entirely within the realm of possibility that we'll soon be playing Dynasty Warriors Xtreme Kingdom Beach Games.

Tecmo said Koei would offer "a greater chance of boosting corporate value" (our analysis: Koei wouldn't overshadow Tecmo like Square Enix would). The Final Fantasy publisher, which initially offered $206 million for a merger "on friendly terms," said it would try to (infinite un)discover more details on the Koei merger in order to figure out Tecmo's rationale and then decide what to do next. This isn't the last (remnant) we've heard of it.

While Hothead is busy pimping its upcoming Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness: Episode 2, let's not forget about its other, simpler-titled project DeathSpank. The company has released three new teaser trailers for the snarky title ("Fight" is shown above), built from the ground up with Joystiq's own Ludwig Kietzmann in mind as the target demographic.

During last weekend's Penny Arcade Expo, Hothead COO Joel DeYoung said he considered the game a "more Diablo-esque" episodic action RPG with ample amounts of creator Ron Gilbert's humor, "lampooning video game space and the idea of the video game hero that takes himself too seriously." The game is not using PAA's Torque engine. More information about DeathSpank should be coming "soon," he said. After the break, check out the "Item" and "Armor" trailer. (Spoiler: Two of these three videos use the phrase "Thong of Justice.")

Of the 100 or so cosplayers we saw (and snapped pictures of) at PAX 2008, we've whittled down the gallery to our favorite 15 costumes. Now we want to know who you thought was the best cosplayer:

During PAX 2008 we had a chance to sit down (on very comfortable bean bags, mind you) and talk with Felicia Day, producer and star of The Guild and star of Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. Day also sang "Still Alive" with Jonathan Coulton the first night of the convention. Some notes from the interview:

• Filming for Season 2 will begin next month. HD cameras will be used, not so much for web streaming but for potential download and the Season 2 DVD. The 13- to 15-episode season will be "a little bit longer," approximately 5 to 6 minutes apiece.
• Day has a level 66 Warlock and level 63 Priest. As an example of life imitating art, Day explains that her fans from the show and the actors who play Zaboo, Vork and Bladezz all play in a guild together.
• She signed the chest of one Dr. Horrible cosplayer and saw another with "actual Wonderflonium." (Warning: Interview contains spoilers.)
• Day guest stars as the patient in episode 2 of the upcoming season of House, but she does not have Lupus.
• Not mentioned: Her demand that Tycho groom her.

[MP3] Download the interview

(Note: When the interview starts, Day is talking about a planned live introduction for a showing of The Guild at Dragon*Con the day before.)

Serving as a great anecdote for the old saying, "You don't know what you got 'til it's gone," an Activision representative has confirmed that Guitar Hero: World Tour will be lacking Rock Band 2's party-friendly "No Fail" option, either as a menu option or as a cheat code. Also interesting is that you can't save your bandmates should one fail; instead, you can comparatively miss more notes than in RB and stay alive.

The lack of a "No Fail" option certainly isn't going to be a game-changer -- after all, its predecessors (including RB1) sold very well without it. And although the virtual rock elitist might scoff at the notion that it's now harder to fail songs, GH:WT does have the added bonus of presenting a detailed analysis of your performance after each song (we've placed an exemplary image after the break Update: Now it really is after the break). We'll have more on our time at PAX 2008 with the game, specifically the drums, later this week.

A few hours before PAX 2008 opened its doors to the public last Friday, we had a chance to speak with Penny Arcade creators Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik -- for simplicity's sake referred to here by their respective pseudonyms Tycho and Gabe -- about the Expo, its future expansion, the intensity of Jenga and the Duke Nukem Forever Omegathon round that never was. Audio embedded below; we've also gone ahead and transcribed highlights from the interview. (Note: To make it easier to read, we've put Gabe's name in red and Tycho's name in blue.)

[MP3] Download the Interview

Is your craving for Fallout 3 currently and properly satiated? If so, hold onto this link for a fix later, but otherwise check out Xbox360Achievement's listing of the game's, well, Achievements. Aside from the usual (30 quest-based, 9 level and karma-based), our favorite new achievement is going to be Psychotic Prankster, which essentially involves adding to your "Exploding Pants" statistic by "placing a grenade or mine while pickpocketing." Of course, the highlights of these little Gamerscore supplements are the associated Vault Boy icons, which would make a great collage for our desktop background.

[Thanks, Dan]

With PAX 2008 bringing out oodles of Penny Arcade love, why not use this opportunity to pimp the upcoming PA Adventures Episode 2? In addition to chatting with COO Joel DeYoung (that aftermath of which will be published early this week), Hothead Games sent us more than a dozen new screenshots, including a few that are just for us (we feel touched by that, although on that note we wonder if some of them are creepy subliminal messages to us). PAA:OTRSPoD Episode 2 is due out later this year.

The show is over and the numbers are in. Said Penny Arcade business guru Robert Khoo to BigDownload, this year's PAX recorded 58,500 people in three days, placing it near the echelon of "Old E3." Previous guesstimations put the attendance at 45,000 to 50,000, which still would have eclipsed the PAX 2007 population of 37,000.

So, what's to be done for PAX 2009? More expansion, of course, to ease overcrowding. "At 2 or 3 of the main theatre events 3-4% of the line wasn't able to make it," said Khoo, "but we hear those 3-4% loud and clear. We have a few ideas to manage that problem for 2009 including wristbands for popular events or just a straight-up hard count of people in line. The worst thing is if people line up for something and end up not getting in." The next PAX will take place again in late August, with the first PAX East Coast opening its Bostonian doors in late March 2010.

Much like that stepbrother you really can't stand, this special PAX 2008 edition of the Joystiq Podcast drops in at an unexpected time and bears little to no resemblance to the rest of the family.

We didn't tamper with any of the Usual Suspect's traditions (sorry, no snacks, although we were obsessively eating Pocky Sticks during recording), else Crudwig McElroy might come after us with a seven-toed iron kick. Still, we had a microphone and 45 minutes to kill, so we decided to recap everything we had seen at the Expo pre-Omegathon final.

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See all of this weekend's links after the break.