Weekly Recap Aug 4th: Army Of Two Devil's Cartel, WoW Subs Down, EA Sues Zynga

August's first week comes to a close and with it a number of gaming goodies that might catch you by surprise. For those of you thoroughly enjoy co-op tales you'll be pleased to know that EA is reviving the Army of Two franchise with Devil's Cartel. Activision's quarterlies are in and World of Warcraft subscriptions are falling off fast, alongside EA's Star Wars: The Old Republic subs. And in no surprising twist of fate, Electronic Arts takes the ban-hammer hot and heavy to Zynga in a copyright infringement lawsuit. Bring the hammer down hard, EA...bring it down hard! These stories and more in this August 4th, 2012 edition of the Gaming Blend Weekly Recap.

Sunday

Splinter Cell Blacklist Screenshots Get Dangerous In The Desert Sam is back and doing what he does best while also being slightly younger.

Blood Knights Screenshot get Involved With Some Bloody Battles The upcoming ARPG shows off a few of the battle sequences in the upcoming title.

APB Reloaded 1.9.0 Media Blow Goes To War Enforcers get ready for war in the latest patch for APB Reloaded.

Artistic Mass Effect 3 Scenes Created In Source Filmmaker A collection of nifty screenshots created in Valve's Filmmaker using Mass Effect 3 assets. It's definitely worth a gander.

Barack Obama Will Need Rescuing In Bad Dudes 2 They're not two crude dudes, but they are bad and they will need to save the Prez from a certain Ninja Master.

Minecraft Was Meant To Be Genderless Well, that was all kinds of fail, wasn't it?

Castle Story Hits Kickstarter Goal In Under 5 Hours Apparently gamers really want a bigger, better version of Minecraft.

Fist of the North Star 2 Release Date Set For December, Screenshots Unveiled A few more playable characters join the fray and a heck of a lot more flying body parts.

Monday

E3 To Remain In Los Angeles Through 2015 Good news for Los Angelians.

Family Party: 30 Great Games Obstacle Arcade Gets Wordy For Wii U The party-game compilation title could be one of the first shovelware titles for the Wii U.

Hybrid's Persistent World Wants Some Gaming Addicts So long as you keep playing the game will keep on trucking.

Borderlands 2 Smarter AI Means Fewer AI? It may not be a bad thing but there's definitely a trend here.

Jay Z Is NBA 2K13's Executive Producer Uh, well...right, of course. That makes perfect sense in Bizarro World.

Diablo 3 Forum Bans Continue To Make Headlines Blizzard is mum but they say they'll have something to add soon. How soon? Who knows.

Skyrim Update 1.7 Arrives For PC, DLC News Coming This Week A few extra fixes just in time for some news regarding the Dawnguard DLC.

Walking Dead Shambles Onto PlayStation Plus Try your hand at the latest episode of TellTale's highly lauded adventure-horror game.

Capcom Has Plenty of Material For Dragon Dogma's 2 And hopefully the sequel will be disc-locked content-free.

Ubisoft uPlay DRM Security Flaw Leaves Gamers Open To Hackers Who wants to have their rootkit exposed?

Holy Avatar Vs Maidens Of The Dead Due Out In September From the makers of Grotesque Tactics comes a brand new ARPG experience.

PlayStation All Stars Battle Royale Screenshots Introduce Arenas Check out a few of the whimsical arenas from the upcoming battle-arena game, exclusively for the PS3.

Tuesday

Book of Unwritten Tales Now Available On Steam A throwback to the age-old point and click adventure genre lands on Steam.

MapleStory Adds Parties And New Modes With Fight For Azwan Nexon keeps the updates rolling out for what's arguably their biggest MMO ever.

Aliens: Colonial Marines Video Has Gearbox Talking About Authenticity There's nothing like authentic aliens but they seem to be lacking in the game.

No Split-Screen Support For Borderlands 2 On PC; Community Makes Split-Screen Happen Anyway Even though the split-screen isn't officially supported, the community takes it upon themselves to provide the option for others.

Star Wars The Old Republic Going Free-To-Play BioWare said they wouldn't, but alas...they did.

Orcs Must Die! 2 Now Slaying On Steam The strategy action title adds multiplayer and plenty of new features to boot.

Would Bethesda Really Want S.T.A.L.K.E.R.? I don't know, it's like asking a CEO do they want more money...I mean, I really don't know.

Secret World Unleashed Update Is Live With Missions but No Nudity Looking for some boobies? Ah, well there's none in Secret World but there's always Far Cry 3.

Final Fantasy III Will Be A Launch Title On Ouya This is some interesting news and sets a nice precedent for the launch line-up of games for Ouya.

Transformers Fall of Cybertron Demo Hits Xbox 360, PS3 Get a taste of the upcoming game from High Moon with a free demo.

Wednesday

Borderlands 2 Is Take Two's Third Most Pre-ordered Game Behind GTA Take Two revels in the success with more than just Grand Theft Auto.

The War Z Website Launches With Lots of Community Excitement Gamers are excited about a possible alternative to DayZ but sometimes it's best to hold off the excitement until actual gameplay footage is revealed.

Cyberpunk Has More Freedom Than The Witcher

Oculus Rift 3D Headset Heads To Kickstarter, Gets Support From Epic, Valve, Unity The headset Carmack was touting all throughout E3 gets a prototype and aims to move out some dev kits for devs.

Borderlands 2 Will Launch Uncut Worldwide With Gore Filter Your country doesn't like gore? Slap a gore filter on it.

Darksiders 2 Armor Scythe Unlockable By Darksiders Players The sequel rewards players from the first game with some extra gear in the second game.

Otherland Five Isles Has Technology Battling Naturalism It's a little tough to put into words but just imagine Avatar and there you have it.

Resident Evil 6 Has Secret Ada Wong Campaign With Agent Hunt Mode An extra mode featuring everyone's favorite femme fatale in the red dress? Well, isn't that a not very big surprise. It's still welcome!

Battlefield 3 Premium Has 1.3 Million Subscribers Looks like anything Activision can do, EA can do better.

Thursday

Way of the Samurai 4 PS3 Release Date Set For August 21st The niche Japanese title finds a North American distribution outlet.

Kid Icarus AR Soon Available In U.S. Crank out some high-fives to your friends as you'll be able to get your hands on some AR cards sooner rather than later.

Rise of the Triad Brings The Holy Crap Back To FPS Gaming Remember in the old school of FPS gaming when foul grotesque content was the standard-fare? Well, Apogee wants to bring it back in full force and they're getting some help from Epic and Interceptor.

LittleBigPlanet Gets Crafty For PS Vita September 25th Start counting down the days, the Vita version of LBP is coming in just one under two months.

Painkiller Hell & Damnation Beta Incoming, Screenshots Released Grab a first-hand look at the new title for PC.

End of Nations 200 Beta Keys Up For Grabs Electronic Theatre is giving away a couple of beta keys for the MMORTS, if you're into that sort of thing.

God of War Ascension Elephantaur Is A Thinking Man's Minotaur We just don't get these kind of freaks of nature anymore. Where is the integrity? Well, the Elephantaur is bringing back to the sexy to the minotaur boss fight.

PlayStation All Stars Battle Royale Gets Fall beta Check the game out this fall with the beta, and test out the PlayStation's Smash Bros.

GTA IV San Andreas Mod Supports Steam After lots of speculation and inquiry into whether San Andreas mod for GTA IV would work for Steam, it becomes clear that the game does work with all versions of GTA IV for Steam.

Shadowrun Online Adds Linux Ouya Support Ouya picks up even more support, even for games that don't even have full funding just yet.

Assassin's Creed 3 AnvilNext Engine Touted In Impressive Video Ubisoft's engine that powers Assassin's Creed 3 is showcased in a new promo trailer.

Friday

Army of Two Devil's Cartel Announced EA revives the franchise of co-op buddies with the third game in the series.

Mass Effect 3 Wii U Screenshots Show Shepard in Action Doing what he (or she) does best. In this case it's mainly just a “he” doing what “he” does best.

U4iA Games To Support OUYA With Future Releases More indie devs come forward to announce their support for OUYA.

Blacklight Devs Giving Away $1,000 A Day For A Month This is good news for anyone who plays Blacklight regularly.

Cabal Online Heads To Arcane Trace This Fall A new update arrives for the long running MMO.

Rambo Video Game Debut Trailer, Screenshots Released The first images and trailer surface for the highly anticipated game based on one of the most popular action-oriented franchises ever.

EA Sues Zynga, Gamers Tell EA To Bury Zynga Now maybe we can get Valve to sue EA when they get finished with Zynga, and then both EA and Zynga will be out of business.

Death Rally Now Available For PC After making waves for mobile devices, the over-head death-rally racer comes to PC.

Saturday

Mass Effect 3 Leviathan Firefight DLC Showcased In New Screenshots The multi and single-player DLC for ME3 gets put on display with some brand new screenshots.

GTA III Rage Classic Mod Puts GTA III In GTA IV Complete with missions. You have to see it to believe it. Check out the latest promotional trailer for the mod after the jump.

Metal Gear Solid 4 Trophy Patch Coming In Early August This means that by the time you read this in the Monthly Recap the patch will already be out and available and you can rest easy knowing that the game is fixed.

Aassassin's Creed 3 Director: Games Can Be Too Long Some games do lose appeal if they don't know when to end. But a good game is never long enough.

Heroes of Ruin Co-op Review A review of the Nintendo 3DS hack-and-slash co-op title. Find out if it stands out above all the other standard-fare crap.

Dishonored Voice Cast Includes Suasn Sarandon, Carrie Fisher Princess Leia and the lesbian vampire join forces in Dishonored. Instant-playability right there.

Sony Wants You To Design DualShock 3 It's not everyday that a company asks gamers to help them design a new controller. Click the link to get all the details.

That wraps up this edition of the Gaming Blend Weekly Recap. The final trailer of the week is an absolute masterpiece of gaming goodness called “GTA IV: Hard Charger”. I'm not going to give anything away but it is a masterful bit of editing. Enjoy.