The top selling Lego platformer series turns the Harry Potter world into bricks and round headed mini figurines for your virtual spell casting delight. Lego Harry Potter: Years 1–4, as the title implies, rounds up the first four books, Philosopher’s Stone, Chamber of Secrets, Prisoner of Azkaban and Goblet of Fire, into a puzzle solving platformer.

Similar to most Lego themed titles, Lego Harry Potter will focus on collecting and exploring but with a magical twist, including the Wingardium Leviosa spell that will lift and build Lego bricks to solve puzzles. The little Lego men you control will have to attend classes to learn spells, mix potions and ride broomsticks in a free roaming castle world that expands every year with more areas and secrets.

“Hogwarts is the biggest, richest, detailed and most all encompassing environment in LEGO we’ve ever created. You discover its size over the course of four years, so it’s not immediately overwhelming – but you get a sense as we go that there’s much more around to explore than is immediately accessible” Said Jonathan Smith Traveller’s Tales head of production.

With over 140 playable characters (I can’t even remember so many characters in the HP books), the experience promises to be diverse and customisable as the most distinct characters have different abilities and skill levels. So Harry will shoot jinxes while whizzing past on his broomstick and Hermione casts the strongest spells. Ron can use Scabbers to crawl into otherwise unreachable areas and Fang digs out items.

Players include: Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger, Hagrid, Dumbledore, Sirius Black, Griphook the goblin, Draco Malfoy, Remus Lupin, Dobby, Buckbeak and centaurs. “What’s radically different is that you have characters who, over four years, go from not being very powerful to becoming incredibly powerful,” said Smith. The characters progress by attending classes and in turn the castle grounds expand with areas that are unlocked with newly earned spells. At the start of the game Harry is more likely to turn himself into a frog than create a successful potion.

Co-op game play is another feature that adds value to the game as another player can drop into a game at anytime. Lego Harry Potter: Years 1–4 hits the shelf in May this year and will feature on Windows, Nintendo DS, Wii, PlayStation 3, PSP and Xbox 360.

The latest installment of the total war series, Napoleon: Total war, will include multiplayer with either co-op, or against-one-another, in the previously single player campaign mode. This includes the option to allow Drop-in battles, much like Guitar Hero, where you can play a single player game online and allow other players to boot the computer and play against you during the game.

Multiplayer support was implemented after the Campaign Multiplayer Beta for Empire: Total War in December 2009. “Following all the great feedback we’ve had from our fans for the Empire Multiplayer Campaign Beta, we’re proud to announce that all three campaigns in Napoleon: Total War will be multiplayer enabled.” said Mike Simpson.

The campaign mode includes napoleons overthrow of Italy, Egypt and Europe in general and some of his greater battles such as Austerlitz, that will feature as historical scenarios separate to the campaign.  There also seems to be a lot more focus on the smaller details such as craters where cannon fire hits, rain that soaks gunpowder and backfires, panicked horses dragging dead cavalry men stuck in their saddles and choice of over 355 uniforms. The turns in the game have also been reduced from six months to two weeks and will allow a closer look at the finer details with increased zoom from previous games. The game will use the Empire: Total War engine.

The game launches around the 23’rd of February 2010 and will be available to download off Steam.

Up and coming Red Dead Redemption will put players in charge of John Marston, a former outlaw turned good doer, riding into town to kill/capture his former gang partner. Faithfull to the GTA Sandbox style of environments, John will be free to roam where he pleases catching trains and shooting out of carriages to pursue criminals and extend the long arm of the law.

Between the shootouts, duels, horse chases and drive by carriage rides, players are free to hunt wildlife and explore the larger than GTA4 surroundings packed with side missions. If gunning down bandits with your hip shooting quick draw bores you after a while you can always lasso the filthy criminal and drag him behind your horse as you ride off into the sunset.

The game is produced using the Rockstar Advanced Game Engine, the same one that brought you the eye candy of GTA4. Tweaking the engine to full steam will immerse the cowboy into a world of changing seasons, varied weather conditions and over 40 different types of animals.

Red Dead Redemption is the prequel to Rockstar San Diego’s Red Dead Revolver released May/June 2004. Revolver, however, got mixed reviews from 2/5 on GameSpy and 4.83/10 on Electronic Gaming Monthly, to 8/10 on Game Informer and 7.3/10 on GameSpot. Due for release on April 30, 2010, Red Dead Redemption will be on sale for Xbox 360 and Playstation 3.

For those who like to customise everything from their consoles to their watch straps, you will be pleased to know that EA games have signed multi-year licence agreements with three electronic accessory manufacturers. The accessories are EA SPORTS-branded and available for consoles, mobile platforms and even PC. This will also include EA SPORTS Active’s line of “interactive fitness products” which more than likely means the Wii but could also include Xbox since Project Natal is out soon.

Sakar International will produce Wii and Nintendo DS accessories such as a “Nintendo DSi(TM) Football Kit” consisting of a game case, earphones, skin and stylus with football-like textures and materials. As well as other football products such as sports-themed MP3 players, digital cameras and computer keyboards and mouse pads with graphics resembling a football field.

Accessories 4 Technology's Wii Fit gear -Expect football themes-

Sunflex Europe has started production on more than 20 products and Accessories 4 Technology will produce for all platforms including iPod. Vice President of Brand Marketing at EA SPORTS, Glenn Chin said the partnerships will “improve our consumers’ experience and deepen their connection to the fabric of sport”. So if replacing your controllers with sports themed branded ones will connect you to your sport game of choice then you can expect the first batch of products to be released around autumn this year.

[s:EA Games]