Fans of EA's Battlefield series who also enjoy playing their games on the PC aren't having a good day. DICE has announced that the long-delayed Battlefield 1943 has finally been canceled for the PC, and we likewise won't be seeing the Onslaught mode in our version of Battlefield: Bad Company 2

"We know some of you eagerly have been awaiting Battlefield 1943 and Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Onslaught on PC," Karl Magnus Troedsson, general manager of DICE, wrote on the official blog. "I'm sad to say that these two titles are now officially canceled. Instead, our talented teams will focus on delivering the greatest possible gaming experience in our next behemoth release. We're confident this will lead to an even better experience in Battlefield 3, not only on PC, but on all platforms."

Battlefield 3 will be unveiled to the press at an event before the upcoming Game Developers Conference, and PC gamers have had the release of Bad Company 2: Vietnam to keep them somewhat placated, but this is still disappointing. We wanted to play some Onslaught! Still, DICE is making it clear that it's looking forward, not back.

We will reserve our rage until after we see Battlefield 3. If it's everything DICE is hinting at, we can be considered satisfied. If not, the bitter complaints will begin again.

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There are two types of people: those who hate the lack of a jump button in the Bionic Commando series, and those who enjoy the complete focus on the grappling hook mechanic. Bionic Commando Rearmed 2 attempts to appeal to both of these groups. You can jump, but you don't have to. And you frequently won't want to since it doesn't work that well. 

BCR2 isn't necessarily a bad game—it still offers up some satisfying 2D, run 'n gun platforming action—but it's not at the same level as its predecessor.

The legal action between Sony and PlayStation 3 hacker George Hotz continues, with Hotz' lawyer Stewart Kellar fighting for jurisdiction in New Jersey, not California. His latest motion seeks a dismissal of the temporary restraining order due to improper venue and lack of personal jurisdiction.

The legal arguments are thick on both sides, but Sony may face an uphill battle claiming that Hotz was aiming his actions towards California, or that his tenuous links to businesses and services residing in the state require California courts to have jurisdiction. In a case where much of the "action" in question took place virtually, with so many parties in play, there is no easy way to sort this out.

Bionic Commando Rearmed 2 has no sort of online play at all. None. There is co-op, but only offline. There is no reason for you to be online if you're playing the game. Unless you want the stupid thing to work, of course. Capcom requires your PlayStation 3 to be online to play Bionic Commando Rearmed 2, the same requirement that everyone hated in Final Fight—a game that at least had online play.

This requirement is laid out in the game's description with a note saying you must log into the PlayStation Network every time you'd like to play, but this makes little sense. Is piracy becoming that large of a problem with downloadable games? Will this do much to stop piracy, even as it annoys everyone who actually buys the game? These are all open questions, but it's hard to justify spending money on a game that won't work if the PlayStation Network ever goes down.

We're busy playing the game for an upcoming review, but we're not sure what to do with coverage when we know most readers are going to reject the game based on this ridiculous online requirement. The Xbox Live version of the game does not require an online connection to play after download. That can't make Sony happy.

One theory states that this is a move to stop the game from being shared between players, and to track how many people are playing each copy of the game. There has to be a better way.

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Duty Calls opens with these words:

War. War never changes. Or does it? War has changed. Did it? The answer is no. Unless it is yes. No, of course it is. It is war.

It takes longer to download the free PC title Duty Calls than it does to play it, but the joke is amazing. The game spends ten minutes or so mocking the conventions of modern, big-budget war games, while praising its own realism and leveling your character for nearly every enemy you kill. 

One soldier points at you, tells you he's pointing at you, and says that this is very important. Then he gets run over. "Oh, I'm dead, increasing the drama of the story," he says mournfully.

But we won't ruin all the jokes, and you do get to look at that nice Bulletstorm trailer again once you finish the game's single mission. The content is slight for a 700MB+ download—sorry Canadians—but it's delicious to see a developer mock games that tend to take themselves so very seriously.

The premise is of course that gamers should enjoy a more funny, action-packed experience than we're used to from dour, "realistic" games, and having the player say the word "boring" while pulling the trigger on his gun makes the point... to an annoying degree.

Making fun of other games to help market them is a trick that Bulletstorm has already used to great effect, and we're hoping they keep it up. You can download the game at the Duty Calls website, and give it a play for yourself.

No one knows how to feel about Sony's NGP without knowing the price. The technical specifications are beyond impressive—many readers expressed something close to disbelief when we shared what would be included in the system—but how much are we willing to pay for a portable gaming system? Even with the lack of details, it's hard not to be filled with geek lust when looking at the delicious indulgence of the thing. Now we have a high-quality version of the trailer showing off many games and how they'll look on the system. It's time to start saving up.

This is how to get us excited about wanting to buy your hardware: show us games we want to play. Take a look.

As Dragon Age II nears release, BioWare has revealed what PC gamers can expect from the game's DRM. The Steam version of the game will feature the regular Steam DRM, with no additions. The non-Steam versions of the game, though, will feature several restrictions.

You won't need the disc in your machine to play and there's no limit to how many PCs you can install the game on, though each install requires you to login to your EA account. There is a limit to how many PCs you can use to access the game over the course of a day, though: you'll only be able to play on up to five systems in a 24-hour period.

The game will require online verification every few days, though details are still being finalized. "We'll have more info on this closer to release," BioWare wrote on the official game forum. "Not trying to avoid the question, we honestly have not settled on this yet—but also did not want to further delay getting the rest of the information out to you."

The developers were also quick to point out that the game does not use the infamous SecuROM DRM. But it does utilize something called Release Control, which restricts players from accessing the game before the release date. BioWare says that this doesn't install anything on your PC, and it will remove itself once the game's release date has passed.

Dragon Age II is set to hit the PC, 360, and PS3 on March 8.

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Sony is simply not having a good time lately. The company is fighting hackers by obtaining restraining orders, it's trying to get tools to hack the PlayStation 3 taken offline, and the latest PS3 firmware has quite a glitch: it makes hard drive upgrades impossible on many PS3 models.

The problem seems due to the rushed nature of Sony's latest security update. A post on NeoGaf explains the situation:

The 3.56 patch is a tiny patch which simply add/changes files in the 3.55 software. This differs from most patches which download the entire firmware. Since part of the software on models with 16MB of flash memory is stored on the hard drive, those PS3's need to reinstall the software when upgrading the drive. PS3's with 256MB of flash memory store all the software in the flash memory so it isn't lost on a drive upgrade.

Anyway since 3.56 is a hot patch and requires 3.55 to be installed prior to updating, you can't install 3.56 on a new drive. You also could install 3.55 when upgrading if not for Sony's software version checks.

Don't worry, Sony isn't removing the ability to upgrade your hard drive. This issue popped up in a previous firmware update and was fixed, which means we can expect more patches in the near future. One poor gamer ran into this glitch the hard way when he tried to format his hardware and start with a fresh PlayStation 3... only to find his system more or less broken without a way to install a working hard drive.

If you're not planning to upgrade your hard drive, this isn't much of a problem, and it should be fixed soon. If you were planning to upgrade, just sit tight until Sony fixes the issue. The worst thing you could do at this point is reformat your hard drive, as there is no way to successfully restore it if you're running the latest firmware.

Update: It looks as if Sony silently pushed out a new version of the 3.56 firmware that requires you to manually update the system. There are no notes on what this new version does, and the version number remains the same, but the problem may have been fixed.

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