As promised, new player-versus-player content has been released for Magicka. The free update features three new modes including Classic Deathmatch and a last-man-standing mode called Brawl. The Krietor mode, named after a Magicka modder, unlocks new spells -- and thus new strategic possibilities -- as the round progresses.

New Magicka DLC is up for purchase as well. First is the Final Frontier pack, priced at $2.99, which includes the Vulcanus Arena map and some new sci-fi goodies (remember that episode of Star Trek?). Also, for $1.99 each, players can pick up the Frozen Lake map, the Watchtower map or the Party Robe pack.

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Players of the PC version of Dungeon Siege 3 were disappointed with the keyboard-and-mouse controls used in the game, generally deciding that using an Xbox 360 controller was the way to go. If you're one of those folks, lead designer says Nathaniel Chapman says there's good news: Obsidian plans to release an update that will improve the traditional PC controls. Chapman says that better PC controls for the game is "one thing I would have liked to have spent more time on, and we are actually spending time on now."

Chapman also hinted that Obsidian would like to have made "a more fleshed out tutorial system" and "more unique armor variants" for the game's four playable characters. But those will have to wait for future versions of the game: "It's always good sequel or DLC material," he said.

Crytek announced a new "package" for Crysis 2 that will add compatibility with DirectX 11, which should improve the graphics significantly for people who are desperately looking for specific improvements that they know DirectX 11 can provide, and improve the graphics a little for everyone else too. A high-resolution texture pack will be available at the same time.

However, it would appear that some users already have the packages. Crytek noted in an update to the announcement that "a number of users were able to download the DX11 and High res texture packages from our test environment," a leak that has since been closed. The rest of us will get to look at those textures, lit by those no-doubt improved lighting effects, on Monday, June 27. A patch will also go out the same day -- it's required for the new textures and the DX11 compatibility.

Virgin Gaming wants to give you up to $10,000! There's a catch, though ... if you want to rescue that loot from Sir Richard Branson's cavernous coffers, you first have to prove your dominance in the field of Killzone 3.

Qualifying rounds for the "Killzone 3 Edge Challenge" open June 27 for the team-based tournament, with $10K up for grabs by the winning team at the end of the six-week event. In addition, weekly stat-based weekly challenges will be posted on Virgin Gaming's site, with their cash prizes. The first challenge: get the most kills!

All told, Virgin is giving away $40,000 in this tournament, which is a promotional partnership between Virgin Gaming, Sony, and, nonsensically enough, Edge shave gel. Do you even shoot one uncovered face in Killzone 3? How do you know how close a Helghast's shave is?

Telltale Games has posted an online survey for gamers researching a little bit about your buying and playing habits, and in return for completing it, you can grab copies of the Tales of Monkey Island episodes 4 and 5 on WiiWare for free. Just fill out the required questions over on SurveyMonkey Island (man we're funny), put in your Wii code, and boom, you're playing the last two episodes of the series for zero dollars.

What's that? You also want to play the first three, but didn't pick them up in that Steam sale? You're in luck -- the series is also coming the iPad. On that platform, the first episode is completely free, and the rest of the episodes are discounted to just $6.99 a piece. More information on that deal in the press release after the break. You'll notice the series has been renamed on Apple's tablet to "Monkey Island Tales," which Telltale says was only so they could put "Monkey Island" first in the title.

So that's the whole series for just two measly payments of just $6.99 (unless you don't have an iPad, in which case you'll have to wait). That's a whole lot of game for just chimp change.

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Love football but hate the parts where there's throwing and play-calling and team management and defense and kicking? Us too. For our sadly ignored minority there's Backbreaker: Vengeance, coming to XBLA on June 29 for an undisclosed price. The digital release takes the original game's Tackle Alley mode, which charges the player with avoiding a preset formation of defenders as they attempt to score, and expands it to a full game.

Though it's an XBLA exclusive for now, the arcade football action will also come to PSN later this summer ... but only in Europe. Who wants to break the news to them that it's not that kind of football?

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We hope you're ready for improved system stability "during use of PS3 format software and network services," because that's what the just-announced PS3 firmware 3.66 is bringing -- and evidently nothing else of note -- likely any time now. PSN director Eric Lempel writes on the PlayStation Blog that this is a "minor update," though based on Sony's servers and your connection speed, it could be a less-than-minor interruption in your ability to play online.

A report by Andriasang claims that Sega has chosen tomorrow, June 23 to launch the demo for its remastered retro remix, Sonic Generations. Although it doesn't cite a source for the information, the site says that the demo will be available for PS3 and Xbox 360, the latter requiring an Xbox Live Gold account to download. Additionally, the one-level trial game will evidently expire on July 12, vanishing from both e-stores and disabling itself if it's been downloaded.

Sony Computer Entertainment Europe has listed the demo as part of tomorrow's European PlayStation Store update, lending a lot of credence to this news, although a representative for Sega America couldn't comment when asked by Joystiq if the demo is planned to hit the US tomorrow, too. It's entirely likely -- though not confirmed -- that the demo's release is being prepared as a surprise to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Sonic franchise, which is, conveniently, June 23.

PS3 owners in Japan would need another surprise tomorrow in order to play the demo, Andriasang points out -- that country's PSN is still offline, with no indication it will be brought back into service within the next 24 hours.

DeNA, Japan's most successful mobile internet company, will offer a free-to-play version of Epic and ChAIR's incredibly successul iOS game, Infinity Blade. Over there it'll be called Infinity Blade X for Mobage, and promises to offer multiplayer and co-op features through DeNA's immensely popular Mobage network -- the game will be free to play and supported by the sale of virtual goods.

Infinity Blade, which is considered a "premium" title everywhere else but Japan (see: it costs more than a buck), was just recently updated with head-to-head multiplayer and survival modes. The game's latest milestone saw it surpass $10 million in sales.

Infinity Blade X for Mobage is scheduled to launch in Japan sometime this fall.

You gotta give it up to Valve. Team Fortress 2 is just shy of being a nineteen-year-old game (jokes!) and the developer is still dishing out fresh, free content. The Über Update festivities continue this week, revealing several new items for the Sniper and the Demoman.

First up, the Sniper gets a new rifle and new melee weapon: the Bazaar Bargain applies bonuses for each consecutive head shot, while the Shahanshah sword gives damage bonuses when low on health. And, yes, we had to quadruple-check how to spell the name of that damn sword.

As for the Demo, he gains access to a new shield called The Splendid Screen, which gives him a ridiculous boost to his charge shot damage and the ability to inflict charge shot damage at any range. Plus he also gets some resistances to fire and explosive damage. The Persian Persuader, his new sword, allows him to convert ammo into health, while Ali Baba's Wee Booties, a new pair of kicks for the Scot, give him a boost to max health and greater turning control while charging.

Today also brings some goodies: World War Wednesday sees the soldier get two new class packs, including a speedier rocket launcher, a new shotgun and some boots that allow the Soldier to deal out extra damage when falling onto unsuspecting enemies. If you want to see these items up close, hit up the source link below to check out Valve's posts.

It seems as if Sony wasn't quite feeling the PlayStation Vita's rear touch panel at first. Speaking to Famitsu (as translated by Andriasang), Sony's president of worldwide studios, Shuhei Yoshida, revealed that the portable's most groundbreaking feature was nearly stricken from the final design due to cost concerns. Specifically, Sony wasn't sure that the effect it would have on gameplay was worth its part of the sticker price.

That changed, though, after people actually got their hands on it; it went from questionable to being a must-have feature. Yoshida said in the same interview that while the touch panel is definitely a keeper, some small elements of the Vita's design are still subject to change. We're guessing he means minor cosmetic tweaks, since the hardware we saw at E3 seemed pretty much final. Whatever gets altered, it'd better not involve removing the ultra-spiffy PlayStation icon pattern on the touch panel.

If you missed out on Beyond Good and Evil during its original release on PC, PS2, GameCube, and Xbox, and then you missed out on it again when the HD version hit XBLA in March, you should definitely not miss out on it this time. Ubisoft announced today that Beyond Good and Evil HD will finally arrive on PSN next Tuesday, June 28.

If you buy the PSN version within the first two weeks, you'll get a pair of free PSN avatars. You'll also get a great action-adventure game! What a deal. Find a trailer (with some extra sound effects added for unnecessary impact) after the break.

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Sure, we already think Portal 2 is a wonderful educational tool, but Valve wants to convince everyone else of that fact. And not by evangelizing the title to college-aged people the world over, but instead by turning the game into a more direct learning experience, with custom tools to match educational programs. "We just add another layer on top of the authoring tools to simplify the production of those spaces," Valve head Gabe Newell explained to us this afternoon.

In so many words, the level creation tool for the PC version of Portal 2 gets another layer of interaction on top of the placement of, say, platforms or boxes. "If you give us a lesson plan, we can give you a tool that allows kids to build content to lock down those lessons," Newell detailed. "The number of times I solved problems about how fast will this be going at this time -- how about if it's on the moon?" In his words, "It's a lot easier to get people excited about it [education] if they're on the moon and they get to throw the rock at the piece of glass that breaks the glass that lets all the robots fly out." We can all agree on that, Mr. Newell.

Without indicating when the education-focused version of Portal 2 will be released, Newell confirmed that his studio is currently building the application. "The layering on top of it of the framework for giving people a direct physical experience of physics is there, but you have to tell me exactly how you want to measure whether or not your students are successful or not." While we're certainly interested to see what Valve cooks up, we have to imagine that the students of the world are far more intrigued.

TechCrunch reports, by way of "multiple sources," that casual gaming powerhouse PopCap – the group behind Plants vs. Zombies, Peggle, and every other game your mom loves and you won't admit to loving – is in the process of being acquired.

... for over $1 billion.

While you consider all the wrong decisions you've made with your life, we'll finish writing this post so we can join you. The buyer remains unknown and, while growth-happy dev Zynga seems like an obvious pick, TC is hearing that PopCap's asking price (over $1 billion, remember?) was too rich for its blood.

TC speculates that either EA, Japanese mobile group DeNA, or Chinese outfit Tencent might be behind the purchase. You may recognize DeNA following its acquisition of ngmoco last year, and Tencent following its majority buyout of free-to-play hit League of Legends. We've asked PopCap for comment which, if the report is true, we expect right after the PopCap team finishes screaming about how rich they are.

[Update 6:09pm ET – As is to be expected, PopCap issued us the following comment: "Per company policy, we do not comment on rumors and speculation of this nature." 6:45pm ET – PopCap's soon-to-be "Customer Engagement Lead" Jennifer Kye took to Twitter to say, "Not true. Rumor debunked." She later clarified that she would be "working there next week" and that her soon-to-be "boss confirmed it" for her. We've again reached out to PopCap for another statement. 7:02pm ET – And PopCap got back to us again – they're really good about that – with the same no comment: "we do not comment on rumors and speculation of this nature."]

Bethesda is going to give Fallout: New Vegas fans a case of the blues next month. "Old World Blues," the third DLC pack for the game -- joining Dead Money and Honest Hearts -- arrives for Xbox 360, PS3 and PC on July 19. This new pack sees players trapped as subjects of a twisted science experiment. Also, as the screenshot above confirms, there will be robotic radscorpions. Yeah.

The days leading up to the DLC's release will see a title update issued for the game across all platforms that promises to improve stability in "major areas," along with performance increases. Bethesda says to expect a trailer for Old World Blues soon.

Last November, our review called the first Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows game a "failure on many, many levels." It ran down the various ways that the game didn't deliver: as a representation of the franchise, as a game, as a demonstration of Kinect and, finally, as an overall product.

EA's proprietary engine, used to build DH Part 2, has been beefed up a bit, giving Harry and co. a bit more sheen than before, and the spell-switching has been streamlined to rely on face buttons to swap spells. Otherwise, it's still a pedestrian third-person shooter with a Harry Potter wrapper, with few meaningful ties to J.K. Rowling's series. (And the Kinect part is just gone).

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With Trenched headlining Xbox Live Arcade this week, Lucha Fury sort of came out of left field. Lucha Fury is a side-scrolling beat-em-up with a heavy dose of lucha libre flavor. Check out the latest XBLA in Brief and see if it's worth getting into the ring.

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