If you’ve been enjoying playing the PvP addition to Spiral Knights, then no doubt you’ve said to yourself, “Well, I do enjoy blowing up my fellow knights with specially-crafted bombs. But what if I want to hit them with my sword?” Well, you are in luck! If bomberman-style games are not your vision of PvP, Spiral Knights has now added a new arena game: Lockdown!

King Krogmo has unveiled his new coliseum event — band together in teams and fight your way across sprawling arenas, work together to control strategic points, and prove your Knighthood on the field of battle!

Lockdown, aside from featuring direct Knight-against-Knight combat, adds new features to help players compete on even footing — and give more depth to the battles. New “Class Mods” allow players in Lockdown to take on unique roles: the classic armored-tank role of the Guardian, the fast and hard hitting Striker, or the elusive and speedy Recon! Winning depends on mastering a playstyle as well as learning to work with your team.

And Spiral HQ has now authorized the use of a new technology for Knights — Loadouts! Loadouts are preset gear configurations, useful in general for getting ready between level strata  within the Clockworks, but specially designed for the Lockdown PvP arena, where you can quickly switch-out gear configurations at your team’s base.

To learn more about the details of this update, check out the full release notes here:
http://forums.spiralknights.com/en/node/25091

Grab your sword — and shield, and suit of armor, and guns, and bombs — and head to the arena. For honor, and glory, and prizes!

We know that so many of you are excited for the upcoming release of Guardian Heroes on XBLA. To help tide you over, we’re going to be revealing concept art, sketches, and more each week until the October 12th release date.

As you may have already guessed, we’re kicking off with Ginjirou, the protagonist from Guardian Heroes.

Giant Bomb has some great character bios for all the Guardian Heroes, so you can brush up if you need a refresher. Here’s their bio for Gijirou:

Ninja protagonist from Guardian Heroes. Has a wide arsenal of moves and an affinity for lightning magic.

Ginjirou is said to have joined the Guardian Heroes in the hope of finding a famous sword known as Muramasa, a sword that is believed to be so powerful that it acquired a soul. He comes across as the most reserved and formal of the game’s main characters, as well as the oldest.

Ginjirou is one of the five characters who can be played as in the game’s story mode, as well as one of the forty-five or so who can be controlled in versus mode.

Of the Guardian Heroes, he is the most mobile as he has many attacks that launch him across the screen, and can usually go further in a single movement than any of his comrades. This makes the ninja well suited to hit and run tactics, a handy skill when facing multiple enemies.

Ginjirou is also fairly adept at magic, specializing in the use of electricity. His most damaging spell usually is his thunder palm, which can be strung together several times for a large combo, and tends to do especially brutal damage to large enemies and robots.

Guardian Heroes will be out on October 12th for XBLA.

Community is at TGS 2011 this year and while we prepare for the upcoming show, I thought everyone would enjoy a preview into our trip out. This is my first trip out to Japan, so I’m learning a lot of what the area is like, the food, the culture, and the heat – it’s so hot!

This is our second time over in Japan covering the TGS show, so I’m going to try and take a bit different approach from what Aaron did in 2009, which honestly might be more food pictures, but that’s ok! Check out Aaron’s coverage for day 1, day 2, and day 3 from the way back machine in 2009.

Shinjuku

Our hotel is centrally located in Shinjuku, which if you’ve played the Yakuza series, it will look very familiar. The area is very busy, and as my first introduction to Tokyo, very exciting. Lots to see and do, with every street opening to a new pedestrian alley way with shops, restaurants, stores, and clubs. And the people too – Shinjuku is very crowded at night with no shortage of people flooding the streets and heading to the very large Shinjuku station.

Pictures of Food Edition

Priorities for the first few days is preparing for the big Tokyo Game Show and eating local food. We’ve long discussed starting a food blog, so this will be our first preview entry with more to come from our trip out. Everything we’ve had so far has been delicious and while I knew the food would be good, I wasn’t prepared for how good it would be!

After walking around Shinjuku we wandered into a shop for sushi – tasty! Featured here is the Aji, which had onion and garlic as well.

Lunch out with our Overseas business team, we picked out chirashi and tonkatsu curry. Having curry is just one item to check off my to-do list and it was very very good too!

Onward to dinner! I’m not entirely sure what this was, but it was good and an interesting photo…

Look familiar? This is the same spot that Aaron went to in his night out with our overseas team. I can confirm, it was just as good as he said it was. Good friends, new friends, and great food.

Sega of Japan Main Office

Day’s big outing is to check in with our SEGA of Japan main office and do some work preparing for the big show tomorrow. The fun part for us was traveling out to visit the SEGA offices and navigating the subway stations and a transfer or two to find our way. Discovering your way around a transit system in a new city is always a bit of a challenge, so imagine trying to do so with a language barrier! We had fun and the adventure was well worth it to arrive at the main SEGA building.

SEGA actually has five buildings in the area, all with different departments and functions. When turning a corner from the train station, we stumbled upon the first, just down the road.

A short walk away is the main SEGA offices, which have a very stylish SEGA parking area.

The SEGA lobby is pretty slick with a familiar face greeting all new visitors as well as a wall of memorabilia with Sonic and SEGA related items.

But wait, there’s more!

So this wraps up Day 1, but there’s still more to see and do and the Tokyo Game Show starts proper tomorrow AM. Definitely check out the Flickr page for TGS 2011 with a few more photos from the days events, perhaps a preview into things to come across the blogs – seriously, I could post more and more photos, but I need sleep – tomorrow is a big day!

We are delighted to confirm that Renegade Ops is now available for immediate download on PlayStation Network and Xbox LIVE Arcade.

Madman Inferno, has detonated a devastating bomb to demonstrate the power of his new deadly weapon. Furious at the world’s leaders decision not to fight against Inferno, General Bryant has recruited a crack team of military specialists, known as the Renegade Ops, from around the globe to wage war against Inferno’s promise of world domination.

Players have the option to fight in single player mode, team up offline with two-player split screen or join the dynamic 4-player online co-op experience, to try and defeat the evil Inferno.

Will you answer General Bryant call and join up with the Renegade Ops to help save the world from Inferno’s plan of World domination?

Renegade Ops™ is priced at 1200MSP, £9.99, €12.99, AUD$ 20.00. Renegade Ops™ will also be coming to PC Digital Download.

See these and more screenshots on our Flickr set.