Codemasters announced today that DiRT 3 will be released globally across all formats on May 24th, 2011 and have provided a few new screenshots as well.

This is news that will surely make a few PS3 Attitude posters happy. Gran Turismo Anywhere – the feature that allows you to drive B-Spec races remotely from another device – is expected to be available from early February. This date came directly from Gran Turismo’s creator Kazunori Yamauchi via his Twitter account (translated by Rob Groove).

For some reason FirstPlay have reviewed some of the most disappointing games of last year, with verdicts on Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1, and Tony Hawk: Shred. Thankfully, much more satisfactory are the PSN reviews of Funky Lab Rat and Pac-Man Championship Edition DX.

There’s also footage of the first hour of Dead Space 2, a guide to tuning in Gran Turismo 5, an online review of Call of Duty: Black Ops, an introduction to MUBI, and screenshot galleries of Dungeon Siege III and Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine.

We’ve been toiling through the comments section for the past few week, looking through and enjoying all your interesting thoughts, and now we’re finally in a position to announce our Platinum Community winners for December.

2010 has been host to many fantastic games, both exclusive and multiplatform. Seanoc has already mentioned heavy hitters including Bayonetta, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, Battlefield: Bad Company 2, and his selection for GOTY, Gran Turismo 5. While they are all spectacular games in their own rights, they hold nothing against the fallen God of War. That’s right; I’m speaking of Kratos in God of War III, my choice for Game of the Year 2010.

Selecting a game of the year is rarely easy, and it has been no different this year.

Best update ever? Quite possibly. There is so much good content it’s not even funny. Where do we even begin? Well, PlayStation Plus Subscribers get a bunch of discounts and a game trial for Borderlands and MAG. Not bad, right? It gets better.

If you’re not a PS+ subscriber, don’t worry, there’s still a bunch of games on sale. Sonic 4, Bomberman Ultra, After Burner Climax, Worms 2, and more. It’s craziness!

Listing all of the downloadable games would be pointless, just know that there are 10 NEOGEO classics now available on the PSN, echochrome ii, Prince of Persia; The Two Thrones HD, Top Darts, and Front Mission 3 for the PSone.

Awesome right? Oh, but there’s more! This week is demos galore – Dead Space 2, Mass Effect 2, LittleBigPlanet 2 (notice a trend?), Blokus, and Beat Sketcher. Glorious, isn’t it? This week’s content will definitely last you for quite some time.

Happy Holidays!

Today in both Europe and North America, Gran Turismo 5 users will be prompted to update the next time they launch the game. Coming in at 608MB, version 1.05 adds a sizable amount of new content and improves functionality within the game.

North American racers will also be pleased to know that today marks the start of GT Academy where one lucky contestant will win the opportunity to become a professional race car driver.

As of December 6th, Gran Turismo 5 has sold more than 5.5 million units worldwide. This brings the total sales for the franchise to more than 60 million!

From a stylistic and technical point of view, Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom is unlike most modern games. The pacing is often slow and thoughtful, and it lacks the intensity that we are used to seeing from other blockbuster games released this generation. It also has a quaint dedication to puzzle solving and platforming. Whether this is good or bad news will depend on what you are actually looking for in the game.

In this week’s episode of FirstPlay there are reviews of Buzz!: The Ultimate Music Quiz, Lord of the Rings: Aragorn’s Quest, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II, and Red Dead Redemption’s Undead Nightmare pack, as well as an online review of Medal of Honor.

There’s also a ‘making of’ feature for James Bond: Blood Stone, an interview with Atari’s executive producer Vince Farquharson, and screenshot galleries of Bulletstorm, Crysis 2, Dead Space 2, Shift 2: Unleashed, and Tokyo Jungle.

Nurburgring Nordschleife is one of the most famous tracks in the world, and it’s also Kazunori Yamauchi’s favourite track. The car-obsessed creator of Gran Turismo has spent years trying to recreate the Ring in all its glory. Well, a racer in Germany has been putting his creation to the test, so we’re now in a position to ask the question: just how accurate is the virtual Nurburgring?

Another month is in the books and in case you missed our November recap, it was a big one. We saw the launch of a couple of goliath games, such as Gran Turismo 5, Call of Duty: Black Ops and Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood. So which of those did we play the most? Come inside to find out.

My oh my, what an insanely awesome month just passed. November is always known for being a big one in the gaming world but both the amount and quality of the games that just hit shelves is staggering. In case you missed any of them, we’ve got them all right here in one place. To go along with it, we’ve also got the latest news on several new streaming movie/tv apps in both Europe and North America.

It was pretty early in the planning stages of the review that we realized it was going to take more than a single article to go over everything Gran Turismo 5 has to offer. We brought you part one earlier this week and now we’re ready to bring you part two.

Earlier this month, EA announced Shift 2: Unleashed, the sequel to last year’s simulation racer Need for Speed: Shift. Curiously, there appears to be less emphasis on “Need for Speed” in the title, although it still comes under the Need for Speed branch of games, and this (along with the suggestive title “Unleashed”) gives us the impression that EA has different plans for the game – that they want the name “Shift” to become famous in its own right, separate from their other arcade racers.

Gran Turismo has always been on a different plateau from its competition; that is not only other racers but just about any game, in any genre. It’s unique for its impressive sense of scale, polish, authenticity, depth and class. Yet, while that is its history, we’re in a different era now; so does this racing Tour de force still deserve to be revered, or is it time we sent Gran Turismo packing, to join Pong at our local gaming museum?

As Gran Turismo 5 launches today, there will undoubtedly be some of you wondering whether or not to buy the game or not. Here’s 5 things you should know about GT5.

We have a feeling that a lot of people will be too absorbed in a certain driving simulator to have much interest in today’s Store update, but to be fair if you thought SCEE would give us a small update this week then you’d be wrong.

For a start, there are several PSN games released, including Pac-Man Championship Edition DX and Funky Lab Rat, as well as downloadable content for Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, Mafia II and Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light.

It’s also worth mentioning this week’s deals, which include offers on all Prince of Persia related content. There’s also a long overdue permanent price cut of the Awakening expansion for Dragon Age: Origins, which is actually a bit of a bargain now.

So, can any of this content tempt you away from the racing behemoth that is Gran Turismo 5?