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Seemingly unsatisfied with the mere announcement of a new game based on the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series, Hothead Games has once again let slip news of a new project in the works at its studio, though this time, it's something familiar to the developer.

Hothead dropped early word to Kotaku this morning that a new sequel to the studio's 2010 downloadable action RPG titles, DeathSpank, and DeathSpank: Thongs of Virtue, will be coming this summer to Xbox Live, the PlayStation Network, and PC. Titled 'The Baconing', this sequel does not feature the involvement of the character's original creator, Ron Gilbert, nor does it feature the word DeathSpank anywhere in the title. It's just The Baconing.

Perhaps this might have something to do with wanting to get away from any negative connotations one might associate with the earlier DeathSpank titles. While generally amusing send-ups of loot-heavy action RPG games, both titles suffered from some rather rote, repetitive gameplay, which our own Jeff Gerstmann took particular issue with in his review of the first title.

That said, Hothead seems well aware of the earlier game's issues and promised in its statement to Kotaku that The Baconing would be a great deal more satisfying to play. The game will apparently feature over 100 new quests, 80 new weapons, 70 different characters, and a new sidekick character named Bob from Marketing. His special abilities will apparently include such gems as: "Laser eye beams; Eat dead bodies to restore health; Eat live bodies as an additional attack option." As someone who once worked alongside a real life Bob from Marketing at one point in my career, I can certify that most of these terrifying abilities are pretty accurate. Sorry, Mr. Picunko.

You can read the entire press release in the Kotaku article, if so inclined. Or you could just go fry up a pan's worth of delicious bacon yourself in celebration of this announcement. Unless you're a vegetarian, in which case, this whole thing is probably just kind of offensive to you. Sorry about that.

Despite the fact that the publisher hasn't exactly had the best track record with MMO development thus far-- Final Fantasy XI was tepidly received, but managed a decent audience following; Final Fantasy XIV...not so much--Square Enix CEO Yoichi Wada seems awfully sure of the company's ability to develop and maintain a bunch of these things.

In a transcript posted yesterday of the publisher's May 13th earnings call--which was translated by Andriasang--Wada stated that the company has a new MMO title in development that the company hopes to announce in this fiscal year. What that title is, exactly, is unclear at the moment, but it is something separate from the current titles Squeenix already maintains. Wada believes that the company having two-to-three different online subscription-based titles will help maintain the company's cash flow.

That probably doesn't do much to quell the seething hate currently residing within anyone still playing Final Fantasy XIV. Wada did apparently go out of his way to mention the problems currently plaguing that title and to state that fixing it will take a little longer, but that a "target" is in sight. So that's reassuring. Probably. Okay, not really.

Also, no word yet on that PS3 version of Final Fantasy XIV, but I'm guessing there's not very many of you out there still keeping a candle burning for that one.

Here's a bit of news guaranteed to get Douglas Adams-loving Earthlings into a tizzy. This morning, developer Hothead Games and "publisher" Megadodo Publications announced that a new Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy project is on the way. 
 

UPDATE: The ESRB just rated an Xbox 360 version of Witcher 2. So, hey, there's that.
 
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Let it forever be known that there is absolutely such a thing as getting a little too cute with your E3 teases. I adore it when developers drop little hints about things they plan for the show, while maintaining a certain level of surprise-protecting secrecy in the process. It builds hype. It's fun. I like fun.

However, maintaining that Goldilocksian balance of "just right" for such teases is difficult, as evidenced by this recent bit of info dropped by a developer from CD Projekt, the studio behind the delightfully lurid Witcher RPG franchise. In speaking to Eurogamer, Senior Producer Tomasz Gop told the site that something Witcher-related is on the horizon for E3. Okay, so far so good. So, what delectable little hints can you drop for us, Tomasz?

"I can't say anything obviously for gazillions of reasons but it is a Witcher game, and I can say that console gamers might be interested in it."

Wow, okay, so that's a bit of an info dump. Not a tease, really. More of a, "Hey, we're doing a console Witcher thing." But hey, at least that leaves some info to chance. Could this be a console port of the studio's just released The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings? Or perhaps it's an announcement of a third Witcher game, which could also be coming to cons--

"No, I'm not going to lie to you, we haven't started work on The Witcher 3," he said. "But it's possible we might do it in the future."

SIGH. Fine. It's probably a console port of Witcher 2. Way to say pretty much everything by trying to say nothing, Tomasz. You've spoiled all my fun. I LIKE FUN.

On the plus side, hey! Now there's probably going to be a console version of The Witcher 2. Now maybe Patrick will quit all his infernal bellyachin'.

Those who have been eagerly awaiting an exciting new entry in Ubisoft'sTom Clancy's Ghost Recon series of tactical shooters... well, here's something, at least. The publisher announced today that 2011 will mark the release of Ghost Recon Online, a free-to-download PC shooter in development at Ubisoft Singapore.

Which precise iteration of Ghost Recon this game might be rooted in is currently unknown, though based on the first-released screenshots (which you can find in gallery format at the bottom of this story), the game seems to work within the same kind of near-future warfare that recent Advanced Warfighter versions operated within. Or maybe I'm just being seduced by the futuristic neon blue of that one guy's helmet, and it just takes place in Afghanistan or something. Again, we don't really know yet.

What we do know is that the game will, like other "freemium" titles out there--yes, that's a thing--feature a microtransaction-oriented pay structure. Players will be able to download and play the game for free, and purchase a host of upgrades and premium items that will, at least theoretically, improve their in-game abilities and help customize the experience.

The title is scheduled to release in the second half of this year, with an online beta going live this summer. You can go to the Ghost Recon Online website to get additional details on the beta, or just sit here and kvetch in the comments about how this totally isn't Ghost Recon: Future Soldier, and how much it sucks that you have to wait until next year for that game to come out. Either is a completely acceptable strategy.

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If things keep up the way they have been, 2011 will officially be the year in which the "seqboot"--that's sequel/reboot combined into one handy term--became the hot new thing. That term is mine, by the way. Trademark pending!

We've already gotten word today of a soon-to-be-announced Carmageddon reboot, and now it looks like Square Enix may be bringing back Eidos' slumbering vampire action series, Legacy of Kain.

Over at Game Revolution, a reader by the name of "daverabbit" (probably not his Christian name) has submitted information regarding a paid survey he took which asked about possible subtitles for a new game in the series. Those four subtitles included: Obsidian Blood, Obsidian Sun, Dead Sun, and Revenant. He was also quizzed as to whether those titles would work best alone, or paired with one of the series' previous primary Legacy of Kain/Blood Omen/Soul Reaver titles.

While a paid survey is hardly definitive proof of a game's existence, my experience has been that publishers don't often contract out these kinds of marketing things unless they already have a project of some fashion in the works. Considering E3 is very much on the horizon, we've heard nothing from the Legacy of Kain series since 2004's Legacy of Kain: Defiance, and the general attitude around the industry lately of, "OH GOD LET'S JUST REBOOT WHATEVER WE HAVE THE RIGHTS TO BECAUSE MONEY," a return of this series really does make a bunch of sense. I imagine we'll hear more in the very near future, if we hear anything at all.

Fun fact: I don't subscribe to the Australian newspaper The Sun Herald. Part of this might have something to with me living in America. I mean, it's not from lack of trying, mind you. It's just sort of impractical to get Aussie newspapers delivered to your home in the USA.

Therefore, I feel thoroughly excused for not having seen a reported interview with Rocksteady developer Dax Ginn featured in the Herald's Sunday edition. However, someone over at the Batman: Arkham City fansite, ArkhamCity.co.uk, did see the interview first-hand, and transcribed Ginn's quotes regarding an as-yet unannounced villain for their upcoming sequel. Thank heaven for the "World-Wide" part of World-Wide Web, right?

According to the transcription, one of Batman's most high-falutin' villains, The Penguin, will be featured prominently in Arkham City's storyline. Some had assumed this would be the case, as early trailers for the game showed the rotund scoundrel's club, the Iceberg Lounge, as a location within the game. But now Ginn has apparently detailed precisely how Oswald Cobblepot will be portrayed within the game, and the newspaper even printed a first image of his in-game visage, which you can see below. == TEASER ==

The way that Penguin has always been portrayed is as quite an aristocratic, well-spoken gentleman who's got these twisted delusions of grandeur. So we've made him a really horrible, nasty piece of work--but still with the delusion of grandeur. He dresses well, but in a poor taste, and we've made him this brutish, brutal guy but also key into [a] collection fascination that he's had through out the years.

Penguin's faction is much more about the collection that he has within his museum of all sorts of things but one of those things he collects is heavily artillery. So when you come up against his thugs in the street they are all going to have seriously heavy weapons and that develops throughout the game as well.

The attitude of this Selena Kyle is closer to that of the late, great Eartha Kitt from the cult '60s TV show: strong, confident, sexy and independent. Comic book nerds will notice Arkham City's Catwoman appears to have been designed in the style of Adam Hughes' covers from the third Catwoman series, a feature Rocksteady hoped people would spot.

Update:VG247 is reporting that Square Enix is actually, in fact, not producing this Carmageddon reboot, as was originally reported around the web. Squeenix had reportedly sold off the rights some time ago to the franchise, and Stainless Games is busy making other titles based on licensed IPs (like Magic: The Gathering and Risk).

VG247 claims that some mysterious independent benefactor is behind this reboot, and that the game will definitely be announced on June 1st. However, it also will not make an appearance at E3. At the very least, the independent factor does bode well for the quality of this reboot's metal soundtrack. Squeenix probably would have just loaded it up with Stone Sour songs or something. Uck. UCK.

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To you, I pose a question: which of the many long-dormant car combat franchises floating around in the vacuum of video game intellectual property limbo would you most like to see revived? If you said Twisted Metal, clearly you haven't been paying attention of late, as David Jaffe and company are already working on that update. If you said Road Rash, I'm right there with you, but it seems like EA is destined to just keep making promises for that one it will never, ever keep. If you said Vigilante 8, you apparently forgot about this awful XBLA remake from 2008, and also seriously? Vigilante 8? Really? If you said WWE Crush Hour, you're obviously just trolling at this point, and I hate you.

== TEASER == That pretty much just leaves Stainless Games' Carmageddon, the biblically-violent vehicular homicide franchise that originated on the PC back in 1997, and through various sequels and ports, also appeared on the PlayStation, Nintendo 64, Game Boy Color, and Mac. With the proposed fourth game in the series canceled back in 2005, neither hide nor hair of the series has been seen since... until now.

Over at Carmageddon.com--which apparently is something that exists--a countdown timer has begun counting down to something. Between the site being registered to Square Enix Europe (the current owner of original Carmageddon publisher, SCi), the appearance of the distinctive skull-and-crossbones on the countdown page, and the fact that the website is called friggin' Carmageddon.com, it seems altogether safe to assume that this is a countdown to some kind of announcement of a Carmageddon reboot/sequel/remake--or reseqmake, if you're into that whole brevity thing.

The countdown is set to expire at 5am on June 1st (Eastern Standard Time), which puts this presumed announcement a full week ahead of E3. That should give everyone a solid week's worth of time to argue tirelessly about what metal band's music should comprise the bulk of the soundtrack, before the deluge of everything else at E3 swallows this announcement whole. I'm going with Watain, personally.

UPDATE: Sony claims the exploit has been fixed and pushed back on reports of an additional hack.

"We temporarily took down the PSN and Qriocity password reset page," said senior director of corporate communications and social media Patrick Seybold on the PlayStation Blog. "Contrary to some reports, there was no hack involved. In the process of resetting of passwords there was a URL exploit that we have subsequently fixed. Consumers who haven’t reset their passwords for PSN are still encouraged to do so directly on their PS3. Otherwise, they can continue to do so via the website as soon as we bring that site back up."

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In case you were betting on how long it was going to take for something to go wrong on the PSN after it began to come back online last weekend, those of you who bet on "five days or less" win the door prize. Congratulations: you get a free copy of inFamous, and your password stolen again.

== TEASER == Late last night, Nyleveia discovered--and users on NeoGAF have verified--that Sony's online password reset system--specifically, the web-based version on sites such as PlayStation.com and Qriocity.com--has a rather nasty exploit in it that allows any would-be hacker to simply reset your account password provided they know your PSN account email and your date of birth. That's it. Entering that info apparently lets anyone who knows the exploit reset your password and access your account. On the plus side, you'll get an email sent to you notifying you that your password has been reset. So that's awesome.

Not long after this was reported, Sony took all of its web-based login systems down, and as of this writing, there is no specific update as to how long this fix will take to put into place. The official SCEE Twitter account noted this morning that "this maintenance doesn't affect PSN on consoles, only the website you click through to from the password change email." So, to clarify, you can still log in on your console and play games online via PSN. You just can't use any of the web-based login sites until Sony fixes this exploit.

Nyleveia suggested that users create an entirely new email address for their PSN accounts, one not associated with any other online accounts in order to be absolutely safe. Because that's where we're at now. We're creating all new accounts just to be able to safely log into the PlayStation Network. I really hate the Internet sometimes.

The last time I saw Dead Island was at E3… in 2006. Kentia Hall, the show's great, barren wasteland of teensy meeting rooms, unmarketable arcade machines, and hot dog vendors still existed. On this particular year, Polish developer Techland had a decent-sized booth set up amid the yellow-carpeted chaos of Kentia. A friendly developer rep didactically explained to me the two PC-only products they were showing. He spent roughly 20 minutes touting the merits of Chrome 2, a follow-up to the developer's semi-liked 2003 first-person shooter, then spent maybe half that time hastily touring me through Dead Island, a zombie game set on a tropical island. Far Cry had been the belle of the PC ball for a couple of years at this point, and I remember the rep excitedly pointing out how the developer's Chrome engine could also do great-looking jungle foliage. And there were zombies. You could hit them with things. In first-person.

I thanked him, went back to our booth, wrote some previews, and then... nothing. Both games seemed to simply disappear into the ether. Chrome 2 never came out, shelved when no publishing deal surfaced and Techland moved on to other work, including the Call of Juarez series for Ubisoft. Dead Island continued to make fitful E3 appearances, but ultimately, I had assumed it suffered the same fate--that is, until a new trailer suddenly surfaced earlier this year, and knocked the collective gaming audience back on its ass. Somehow, this seemingly generic zombie game from five years prior had risen from the dead, and not just as the shambolic-looking title I remembered. The trailer affected a kind of emotional impact that the previous iteration never even hinted at. And while that trailer doesn't exactly benchmark the exact tone of the game you'll be playing, it's safe to say that Dead Island offers up a hell of a lot more than Techland even hinted at when it first debuted the game to the world.

To be absolutely blunt about it, it feels a little bit like Techland has been quietly amassing inspirado from a variety of other games released in the last few years: Namely, the likes of Valve's multiplayer zombie-shooter, Left 4 Dead, Capcom's raucously silly Dead Rising series, and Bethesda's brand of first-person role-playing games, especially those of the Fallout ilk. The end result--at least from the two levels publisher Deep Silver showed us during a recent press tour--is a game that feels broad, if not overly deep. There were moments of deep, bloody satisfaction, and moments of straight up awkwardness.

The game opens with a cutscene that's like a zombie-plagued version of Prodigy's "Smack My Bitch Up" music video. A man stumbles around a resort on the picturesque tropical island of Banoi, in Papua New Guinea. He is clearly drunk out of his mind, bumping into people, aggressively trying to dance with disinterested ladies, grabbing handfuls of pills off of the floor with no identifiable interest in what they might be, and eventually, careening into (what is hopefully) his hotel room, passing straight out on the bed. In between, there are hints of the coming apocalypse. Visions of dead bodies and cannibalistic bikini babes taking chunks out of hotel staffers, but given the man's general state, it's understandable that he might have other pressing concerns.

This island paradise is the Dead Island of the title, but you won't find yourself limited to the resort area you originally start out in. Banoi is an open world, full of towns, jungles, beaches, and lots and lots of dead things that want to eat the contents of your skull. You'll start the game off as one of four playable characters--or, if you opt to play in online co-op, you and your friends can play as multiple combinations of characters--each inexplicably immune to the zombie virus that's taken hold of the island, and each with their own strengths and weaknesses when it comes to combat. For our demo, I played as Xian Mei, a hotel employee with a particular predilection toward bladed weapons.

The first level I checked out was from an earlier portion of the game. Holed up inside a radio tower with a group of other survivors, I took a mission that required me to trek to another location some distance away to grab some flares that had been left on a beach. The giver of this mission was one of several survivors you could take missions from around the tower. NPCs are all over Banoi, and though some are just folk you'll end up chatting with--or getting shouted at by--many will offer up missions and goals for you to partake of. The Deep Silver rep who toured me through the game clocked the game's main storyline at something like 20 hours worth of gameplay, but also said that many additional side-missions could be taken on as well.

Once you leave the relative safety of one of the game's survivor zones, you're immediately in the shit. The flaming, blood-soaked wreckage of a once-gorgeous South Pacific Island is, admittedly, quite the sight to behold. This becomes especially the case once the shuffling corpses of tourists and residents alike start ambling toward you with cannibalistic intent. As Mei's general strength is with blades, I stuck to alternating between a machete and a hefty pickax. The game's zombies feature multiple layers of muscle and meaty bits beneath their tattered surface, so laying into a zombie with a bladed weapon leads to some rather hysterical obliteration--especially when you eventually graduate to Dead Island's weapons upgrade system.

Similar to Dead Rising 2, you'll find work benches around the island, where you can combine things into other implements of zombie death. I saw the usual baseball bats with nails through them, of course. But then, you also have your exploding daggers and electrified machete. Yeah, those are pretty fun.

The trick with the game's combat is a stamina system, which prevents you from just running around, swinging wildly like you haven't a care in the world. The more you jump, dodge and attack, the more you deplete the meter, and if you completely drain it, you're out of action for a few moments while it replenishes. Admittedly, this took some serious getting used to. Zombie games have often taught us that zombies are to be killed bloodily, and killed quickly. Here, you actually have to enact some strategy when hordes of undead start heading in your general direction.

While that strategy does add some depth to the combat you wouldn't otherwise tend to find in a game like this, I also felt like, at times, it limited my enjoyment in killing them off. Moments of satisfaction were definitely there, but other times, I felt like I was dancing around zombies a little too often. Maybe it's telling that the most amusing moment actually came from a glitch where I uppercutted a zombie with the pickax, and it went flying into the air, landing on the ground with a resounding thud and exploding into dozens of pieces of rancid meat. The Deep Silver rep quickly pointed out that that was something they were planning to fix. Honestly, I kind of wanted more absurd stuff like that.

Granted, part of my discomfort with the combat system likely stemmed from jumping into a level far-past the game's tutorial. By this point in the game, many different types of zombies have already been introduced. Early on, you will presumably start out with the slower, more sluggish zombies of the Romero camp. But over time, you'll find yourself up against faster, more aggressive 28 Days Later… brand zombies, big, honking boss zombies, and even bizarre, Left 4 Dead-esque mutant boss zombies.

One of those reared their head in the second level we toured, which took place much later in the game, and brought me into the main city area of the island. Here, I was tasked with rescuing a group of survivors trapped in a church by a fiendish juggernaut of a boss zombie. Looking a little like Hannibal Lecter on a cocktail of HGH and PCP, this guy was using his head as a battering ram to try and get inside the church. To defeat him, I had to run up, taunt him a bit, let him charge me, then attack him from behind when he hit the wall. Yeah, a little bit standard as boss tactics go, but at least I didn't have to hit him on his weak spot three times.

Once I beat him and got inside the church, more missions opened up as I talked to more NPCs, and outside, the weather began to change. One of the cooler visual aspects of the game is how, over the course of the later game sections, the weather will begin to turn seriously sour. Hearkening back to Jurassic Park, you're also in a race against time to try and escape the island before a massive storm hits. Cloud cover, rain, and other nifty weather effects start to pop as the game goes along. All told, the game does look real sharp at this stage of development, though one awkward bit I noticed was the NPCs, who have a little bit of that dead-eyed Oblivion thing going on. The voice-acting also is… a little suspect in places. While I enjoyed that Xian Mei clearly was getting into her role as a righteous hand of zombie destruction, some of her one-liners are seriously cringe-worthy.

All of this has been taken away from a 30-minute chunk of a purportedly 20-hour game, so clearly there is a great deal more to Dead Island that has yet to be seen. My primary reaction to that 30-minute demo was one of general admiration for the sheer volume of ideas the game has in its head. Yes, many of those ideas have been done by other games in the past, but Dead Island wears its inspirations on its filthy, blood-encrusted sleeve, and for the most part, it seems to make good use of them. Even removing the lackluster, seemingly destined for budget bin hell version of the game I saw all those years ago, this version of Dead Island feels like Techland's biggest, riskiest venture yet. With any luck, that risk will pay off as something truly exciting for those still unwearied by the deluge of zombie-everything currently permeating pop culture. There are still a lot of us out there, believe it or not.