Weekly Recap Aug 18th: Journey Used In Church, Funcom Vs Metacritic, Castle Crashers On Steam

While GamesCom offered up a ton of media assets, stories and news for new and upcoming games, it was the non-GamesCom events that really helped shape gaming news this week, starting with a church that actually uses Journey to help teach people about religion. Yes, a church using a video game to help teach people about religion. Interesting. Funcom took to the public forums to berate Metacritic because, well, the low score is what they believe to have affected their overall sales for The Secret World. And one of the most popular Xbox Live Arcade games ever released will actually make its debut on PC exclusively via Steam, that's right...Castle Crashers is coming to Steam. These stories and more in this August 18th, 2012 edition of the Gaming Blend Weekly Recap.

Sunday

Oddworld Abe Oddysee HD Gets Its First Screen The HD remake of the classic adventure title receives a new screenshot.

Blizzard Unbans Then Re-Bans Diablo 3 Account Over RMAH It's a mind-boggling thing why anyone would bother using the service again if you're being banned for no other reason than for the fact that you're using the service.

NBA 2K13 Screenshots Highlight Cover Athletes New shots of the cover athletes for this year's rendition of the popular NBA outing.

Desert Storm Mod Turns GTA IV Into Spec Ops The Line. Imagine Liberty City swimming in sand just like Dubai in Spec Ops: The Line...now imagine all the fun you can have with a mod like that. Awesome, right?

Monday

Sleeping Dogs Walkthrough Videos Contain More Than 30 Minutes Of Gameplay Lots and lots and lots of sweet, sweet gameplay is on display in a couple of new gameplay walkthrough videos.

FDSL Tech Allows Gamers To Trade Used Digital Games This is the first step in revolutionizing the history of video game resale...hopefully...I guess.

Sleeping Dogs DLC In Development, Will Include Cars, Clothes, Missions Everything that makes an expansion an expansion will be included in the DLC for Sleeping Dogs.

PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale Gets Pushed Back To November 20th A very minor delay is all.

Funcom Says MetaCritic Hurt Secret World's Success Yeah, that 72 out of 100 really made people stop and think about whether they wanted to purchase the game or not.

Grimlands Latest Beta Screenshots Released An update of the vehicles and weapons featured in the upcoming MMOFPS from Gamigo.

Mass Effect Adventure Game Searches For Shepard An old-school-esque point-and-click adventure title takes Mass Effect back to the Golden Era of gaming.

Sports Champions 2 Beefs Up Archery Offerings Well, if you felt you weren't getting enough arrow-through-wood action in your competitive mini-game compilation titles, now you do.

Codemasters Says Grid 2 Cockpit View Isn't Worth It Why? Because technically it takes away from other aspects of the game that could be enhanced instead. It's something entirely left up for player discretion.

Battlefield 4 Returns To The Modern Day Unlike Black Ops 2, Battlefield 4 wants to maintain its modern-day persona and so there won't be any of that future-blip stuff from the latest Call of Duty.

Dead Or Alive 5 Flowchart Explains Characters A complete and comprehensive flowchart for the upcoming fighting title from Tecmo Koei.

Damage Inc Multiplayer Demo Now Available On Xbox Live The game is set for release in late August but you can grab a glimpse of the in-game content with a free demo.

Tuesday

PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale Adds Ratched & Clank, Spike, Dante, Sackboy It's like an all-stars battle royale of famous PlayStation characters...oh wait!

Routine: Space-Themed Horror-Survival Game To Rival Dead Space If you're looking for a sci-fi thriller with deep-rooted horror themes and gameplay, Routine just might be that game.

Until Dawn Brings Cheesy Teen-Horror To PS3 You at least have to applaud the developers for doing something completely different with this game...bringing bad 80s teen-horror tropes to the video game universe.

Half-Life 3 Teased In New Trailer It's to be expected given that everyone wants to get in on the Half-Life 3 hype.

PS Vita Exclusive Tearaway Announced By LittleBigPlanet Studio This game looks absolutely marvelous and the use of the PSV's prime features are put simply astounding.

KillZone Mercenary Helps Helghast On Vita Nihilist Software is workingo n the new KillZone game for Sony's “dying” but not dead handheld portable.

Mad Catz S.T.R.I.K.E 7 Keyboard With V.E.N.O.M. Monitor Now Available This super-kick butt keyboard would make for an awesome buy, assuming you have the money to blow on it.

PlayStation 3 Gets YouTube App It's up and live and laggy. Put this bad boy to use and watch some of your favorite YouTube stars via the PS3.

Dead Space 3 Release Date Set For February, Limited Edition Provides Bonus DLC EA sets the official release date for the upcoming third-person action-horror game for both home consoles and PC.

Darksiders 2 Review: Death Waits For Puzzles If you thought Death waits for no one, think again...he has to do a whole lot of waiting a

Hitman Absolution Contracts Mode Lets You Design Missions Hmm, challenging your friends with a mission setup? That sounds like it could be devilishly delightful.

Wednesday

Catwoman Joins Cast of Injustice: Gods Among Us Who really thought that Batman and Nightwing would have joined the fray without Catwoman? Exactly.

Primordia Teaser Trailer Embraces Cyber-Punk Adventures This is like, gritty, desert cyber-punk...an awesome alternative to the gritty urban-noir, cyber-punk from Wadjet-Eye Games' other adventure title, Gemini Rue.

Journey Used In Church Services This was an odd mix but it happened nonetheless. Definitely makes church more interesting, eh?

Tales From Space Mutant Blobs Attack Devouring Everything On Steam After making its remarkable debut for the PS Vita, the game finds a warm and welcoming home on Steam.

StarCraft 2 Heart of the Swarm Beta Invites Coming Soon Blizzard is preparing for th next phase of StarCraft 2-dom and they're preparing to send out the call of the beta.

Ex-Triad Says Sleeping Dogs Is As Violent As Real-Life Hong Kong Well, that's a comforting thought, no?

Sound Blaster Tactic3D Rage Wireless and Wired Headset Announced Game in style with the new brand of headsets being released from Creative Labs' Sound Blaster division.

Mass Effect 3 Leviathan DLC Release Date Is Set More content, more missions and more of everything else, because BioWare knows they can milk gamers for everything they're worth.

Sly Cooper Thieves In Time Introduces New Character And Altered Reality New gameplay mechanic details are covered as well as a new cast member in the upcoming platforming adventure title.

Gamespy Warns PC Gamers Of Shoddy Darksiders 2 Port Well, because PC gamers deserve to know what's going on in their hard drive space and how that space is being utilized by a game that doesn't let you modify said space very much. In simple terms, Darksiders II suffers from consolitis.

Thursday

Get Borderlands 2 Free With EVGA GTX 660 Ti If you have some cash to burn you can get Borderlands 2 for free with the new GTX 660 Ti.

Razer DeathStalker Ultimate Keyboard Announced The new keyboard is a cheaper alternative to Mad Catz' monster-beast but it's not quite as snazzy.

EA Could Be Up For Sale For $20 A Share The company isn't dead yet but the rumors are spreading that they be bought out for real this time.

Hounds: Free-to-Play Role-Playing Shooter Announced The new shooter from Netmarble seems to want to be something different but is it?

Zone Of The Enders HD Collection Contains Demo For Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance A really cool game getting an HD re-do has a demo for one of the coolest upcoming third-person hack-and-slash titles around. I can dig it, can you?

Castlevania Lords of Shadow 2 Confirmed For PC If you have yet to upgrade (or downgrade if you're using a high-end PC) to a home console, Konami is bringing the Lords of Shadow to a PC near you.

Uplay For PC Launches With $1 Games Once a month Uplay will give away a game for $1 to help bring in an ample PC audience.

XCOM Enemy Unknown Multiplayer Screenshots Released Check out some brand new screens of the competitive multiplayer mode for XCOM Enemy Unknown.

War of the Roses Officially Enters Beta Testing Paradox Interactive puts War of the Roses into the beta testing phase for gamers willing to give the action hack-and-slash title a try before they buy it.

Persona 4 Golden Pre-Orders Get Free Vita Skin You can deck your PSV out with a slick looking golden skin if you pre-order Persona 4.

Friday

Rain Introduces PlayStation Network Invisible Boy Yet another interesting new title is announced for PlayStation gamers. Sony never fails to deliver.

Battlefield Bad Company 3, Mirror's Edge 2 Looking More Likely DICE has some plans for both IP, and it doesn't include letting them rot on a digital shelf.

Castle Crashers Coming To PC, Exclusively Through Steam It took a while but the Xbox Live Arcade beat e'm up is finally making its way to Valve's digital distribution platform.

Ben 10 Alien Escape Makes A Break For iDevices You love you some Ben10? Well, a new game is scheduled to release for iOS devices soon enough to coincide with the launch of the new cartoon.

Sports Champions 2 Moves To October 30th Release A minor delay could hint at the actual release date of the Wii U. Could the new console launch on October 30th with the new game?

CD Projekt REDkit Now Available For Witcher 2 Start designing your own gaming experiences for the Witcher 2 with the new kit.

Darksiders 2 Complete Boss Battle Walkthrough A complete walkthrough of the boss battles in Vigil's latest game, complete with commentary. If you suck that bad at the game this walkthrough might be useful.

SteelSeries Free Mobile game Controller Coming This Fall Just to let you all know, this expensive piece of wireless equipment is not free by a long shot. In fact, this little device carries a hefty $79.99 price tag with it. That kind of sucks, yeah?

007 Legends Has Die Another Day, License To Kill Missions Two of the more action-heavy Bond films will be featured throughout 007 Legends.

Saturday

BioWare Encourages Other Developers To Embrace Day 1 DLC Now this is the sort of thing you probably don't want spreading around the industry like some kind of viral fungi.

Game Store: Video Series About The Dark Side Of Gaming A new gaming series is kind of stark, dark and dolor...but it just might be to your liking.

BioWare Co-Founder Leaves The Old Republic Studio Well he has better things to do than try to dump water out of the Tortanic.

Far Cry 3 Screenshots Hunt Pathers, Play Card Games New screenshots and details on the upcoming Far Cry 3 outing that showcases a bit more of the ecological side of the gameplay.

Trine 2 Goblin Menace DLC Coming This Fall Awesome news for gamers who really did enjoy Trine 2 and are looking for additional gameplay out of the multiplayer platforming title.

Fable Journey Demo Announced With Story Documentary We haven't heard a lot about this game since the departure of Peter Molyneux from Lionhead Studios, but we're finally getting some extra details on the game.

Crytek Says Crysis 3 Will Melt PCs Oh yes, there will be sparks, so sayeth Crytek.

That wraps up this edition of the Gaming Blend Weekly Recap. There's some new footage of the upcoming, isometric ARPG Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing courtesy of Gametrailers. We usually mention this game in passing but here's a first look at some alpha footage of the game. You can check out the new six minute video below.