Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War 2 is getting a hot new expansion, Chaos Rising, bringing the twisted denizens of the Warp to Relic's much-loved tactical RPG. To celebrate, some brand new screens have appeared on the game's official Web site, while Relic tells us a little bit about the new campaign.

"We increased the level cap to 30, which let us add more trait unlocks to pursue. We also added new wargear options, including Lightning Claws and Melta guns, on top of newer higher level wargear. Lastly, we added an entire new character, Jonah the Librarian," explains the developer. "Corruption adds an entirely new layer to customize your squads with, and directly ties back to choices you make in the campaign. Your squads can become corrupt (or redeem themselves of corruption) by completing specific objectives, capturing crucial structures, making specific choices about mission deployments, or even just by following the example your Force Commander sets."

"We also tied a number of new wargear pieces to corruption. Some pieces of gear will require you to be corrupted, others will require you to be pure. Others will be easy to equip, but cause you to become corrupt. Becoming wholly corrupt or remaining wholly pure is difficult, but neither is a penalty -- they both come with unique rewards and playstyles."

I've only just started getting into Dawn of War 2, but have so far been impressed. I used to like Warhammer 40k many years ago, and found Chaos to be particularly interesting, so I shall definite look forward to playing Chaos Rising. They totally need some Thousand Sons up in that bitch though.

Assassin's Creed 2 and New Super Mario Bros. Wii both released this week, but neither were able to top the might of Modern Warfare 2. They take second and third place respectively, as Activision looks set to repeat the ludicrous success that last year's World at War enjoyed.

Left 4 Dead 2 debuted at a respectable, if not mind blowing, number seven on the chart. Otherwise, sports, fitness and racing games once again have majority control over the list, occupying eleven of the chart's twenty positions.

Hit the jump for the usual numbers.

Visceral drew the ire of bookworms and literature students when it revealed its videogame adaptation of Dante's Inferno. Some believe the classic poem has been violated by a tasteless videogame company doing tasteless videogame things, but the studio has hit back by claiming that true fans of the poem actually love the game.

"Generally those critics are often people who weren't fans of the poem and weren't that familiar with it until they heard we were doing this," alleges executive producer Jonathan Knight. "What we're finding is, a few people anyway, that quite clearly didn't know it well, now have gone off and read it and they're looking for ways to go, oh you're taking liberties here, or you didn't do this, or whatever. But the reality is that true Dante fans, people who actually have spent time with the literature and care about it are over the moon with the game project.

"I like to say the game is a celebration of Dante. There are more people going to actually read the poem, learn about The Divine Comedy, read up on Dante and what he meant to western culture, than otherwise would have. That's a good thing. The game's not meant to replace the poem. It's not meant to be like, hey, play the game and you don't have to read the poem. The cool thing is the opposite is happening. More people are reading it, not less, because of the game."

I think Visceral has it right. The Dante's Inferno videogame can have as little or as much to do with the poem as you want. It's not taken anything away from the original work, and those crying sacrilege really are getting worked up over something that has no real impact on their enjoyment of literature. It's a videogame. Its job is to entertain us a game, not as a book.

Of course, if the game itself sucks, then feel free to criticize it to the Moon. But let's wait on that, shall we?

Capcom has been talking about new intellectual property, explaining that nothing is more difficult in this industry than getting a brand new game series started.

"There is nothing more difficult in this business than launching new IP," explains Christian Svensson. "Capcom is fortunate, and I think has a better track record than most - we do very few licensed properties. Look across our history, and our portfolio of products, and they are all things that we own and control. Resident Evil, Street Fighter, Devil May Cry, Lost Planet, Dead Rising, Okami, Megaman: these are all iconic brands.

"And I would look at Okami, Dead Rising and Lost Planet as three of this generation's(ish) successful new launches. We brought back Street Fighter to be relevant again, after a nine or ten-year hiatus of re-releases and rehashes. These are really hard things to do."

It's a shame that new IP struggles these days, but publishers could perhaps stand to break the vicious cycle. Consumers don't know about a new game, so the publisher doesn't feel like marketing it properly, so consumers keep not knowing, and publishers keep not marketing. If you gave Okami the same marketing budget Capcom gives Resident Evil, I bet it would have sold quite well. Often, all it takes is simply telling customers a game is huge in order to make it huge.

Just look at Halo.

Videogames: The create murderers. They breed rapists. They warp our children. Now they violate international law and allow gamers to commit heinous war crimes. That's the assertion of two human rights organizations, in any case. They conducted what one could kindly call a ludicrously unimportant study to come to their conclusions and have managed to prove ... well, nothing.

Trial and Pro Juventute are the two groups who played these games under the guidance of humanitarian lawyers, looking at such games as Army of Two, Call of Duty: World at War, Far Cry 2 and many more. It seems that their only real goal in this study was to piss and moan about the results. Piss and moan they did.

"The practically complete absence of rules or sanctions is ... astonishing," states the study. " ... "[We] call upon game producers to consequently and creatively incorporate rules of international humanitarian law and human rights into their games."

Games were chosen over movies thanks to their interactivity, which the study claims blurs the lines between reality and fiction to create a "simulation of real life situations on the battlefield." The report was critical of the fact that characters can be tortured, summary executions can be found and "protected objects" like churches and mosques can be destroyed. Videogames don't wage war according to the Geneva convention, basically.

This is one of the stupidest game-related studies ever.

A short while back, Namco Bandai had teased that an RPG will be making a big comeback, and fans excitedly crossed their fingers for a new Xenosaga or other such venerable franchise. If you're a fan of the Xenosaga series, you are to be disappointed bitterly. If you're a fan of the poor man's Pokemon, you are to be thrilled.

Yep, Digimon is coming back.

The big RPG tease was to herald the return of Digimon, Scamco's male-centric Tamagotchi franchise that eventually got its own TV series and became quite a popular Japanese fixture toward the end of the nineties. There is to be no Xenosaga, and no Baiten Kaitos. We should have seen this coming, really.

The new game appears to be called Digimon Story, and it's due for arrival on the Nintendo DS. Yeah I know, this sucks.

[Thanks, Miles]

Crackdown 2 does not even have a release date yet, but let's not stop Ruffian from talking about Crackdown 3. Talking to VG247, Crackdown 2's developer has jumped the gun to let us know that Crackdown 3 will "alter" the game's location, rather than return to Pacific City as Crackdown 2 has done.

"When we go to Crackdown 3 things’ll alter again. But yeah, for Crackdown 2 it made more sense to stick in the same city, because it is pushing on from the idea of the Freak fires and how they’ve affected the city," explains Ruffian creative director Billy Thomson. "It’s not a case of doing it because it’s quicker. If anything it’s taken just as long to re-do what’s already there, because we’ve got to make sure we don’t break what we spent so much time getting right in the first game."

Thomson also confirmed that Crackdown 2 will run at thirty frames-per-second, for those of you who get off on all that graphical stuff: "“We will just keep hitting it until we hit 30. Because it does need to be a constant 30. As soon as we go above that, we need to stop."

Crackdown 2 is set for 2010, but no firm release date has been given. We're all pretty much looking forward to it at Destructoid though, so we eagerly anticipate news of its launch.

There are young girls buried in the back yards of America that most likely have this image as the last thing they ever saw. It's allegedly a Pikachu ski mask but it looks like something only a perverse sex murderer would wear. I'm fairly certain Albert Fish had a mask just like this.

I really do wonder what possesses someone to create such items as this. I love videogames as much as the next guy, but I'm not prepared to risk being a rape suspect in order to boast my fandom. Oh well, whatever gets people off, I suppose.

This is the most newsworthy thing I've seen so far this morning, by the way.

Old meme is old, I know, but I've been in Miami all week and Niero has not stopped playing it. It's stuck in my head and I feel I must exorcise the demon by posting it on the frontpage. So yes, do please look at my horse. My horse is amazing.

While I am here, I promised I'd give a shout out to Destructoid's new Steam group, since I am now a super PC gamer and have been rocking the computer games all week. So yeah, if you're a Steam user and love Dtoid, check it out!

Anyway, videogames. Hit the jump to find out about all the damn videogames.

Let it be known across the land that I am now a PC gamer. I have come into possession of a PC that has glowing green lights on it which means it's probably awesome, and I have been downloading games on Steam and playing them with a mouse. This qualifies me for membership in the prestigious association of PC gamers, and I couldn't be prouder.

Now that I am a PC gamer and have received my official PC gamer decoder ring, I must conform to standards so that I may gain social acceptance among my new peers. Fortunately, I have the social conformity skills of a highly intelligent psychopath, and thus have compiled a perfectly observed to-do list that will allow me to blend into PC society like a sex offender in France.

Read on to learn how this social chameleon will become the ultimate PC gamer.

Left 4 Dead 2 released this past week and while most people are having fun with it, there is a dedicated clan of people who are determined to convince the world that Left 4 Dead 2 is not a real game. These people, who we shall class as "f*cking idiots," have labeled Left 4 Dead 2 an expansion pack, unworthy of accolade and recognition.

These people are wrong and stupid. Left 4 Dead 2 is every bit a sequel as any other game, and trying to say otherwise is ludicrous. The arguments supporting the claim that L4D2 is an expansion remain nonsensical and reek of double standards. If you think Left 4 Dead 2 is an expansion, you are clearly very ignorant, very unintelligent, or you simply haven't played the game.

Read on as we explain why thinking Left 4 Dead 2 is an expansion makes you a f*cking idiot.

The first thing you'll notice about this video is how I sound like my voice is about to turn into a frog. That's because I was sick as Hell when I recorded it. Still, I bravely soldiered on to produce the video, with a little help from our very own Rey Gutierrez, since I've been in Miami.

This week, I have been creating the video on the brand new computer of greatness that I have received. It allowed me to be a bit more adventurous with editing, even though the software I got was borked so the size has come out a tiny bit smaller than Viddler's player. Still, it's in actual HD this week, so progress has been made!

Oh, and I should also note that the script for this episode is horribly juvenile. I do not apologize in advance.

Despite all the complaints, controversies and nerd rage surrounding PC version of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Infinity Ward has officially declared that it sold more than the original game, indicating that the lack of dedicated servers was not a huge deal to most consumers.

"The PC version of Modern Warfare 2 has actually outsold the PC version of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare in its first week," confirms Infinity Ward's Robert Bowling, "making it the most successful PC version."

It seems that Infinity Ward could have done no wrong with Modern Warfare 2. It managed to alienate a huge section of the PC gamer community, earn nothing but negative press about the PC release, and yet still eclipse the sales of Call of Duty 4. In any case, it would appear that dedicated servers are not quite as important to most PC gamers as some of them make out.

Of course, it doesn't help that most of the supposed boycotters are playing the game right now.

Following on from our discovery of a Midnight Riders teaser site, we've just been tipped offLeft 4 Dead 2's resident rock band now has a blog, as well as a Youtube channel. Check it out because it's brilliant stuff! The blog reveals that despite the "Green Flu," the Riders are still touring because America needs MUSIC!

"So I’m sure y’all have heard by now that yer ol’ pal Dusty said a few controversial things at the Waynesboro, Oklahoma show last night, coming down pretty hard against cancer research," says one blog entry. "I just wanna say that we totally support our pal, even though officially the Midnight Riders do not endorse any of the opinions voiced by Dusty last night, nor condone his actions afterwards, when a journalist asked him why he loved cancer and Dusty knifed him between the ribs."

Quite what all the promotion is for, we cannot say, but it seems like Valve is definitely going to be pushing The Midnight Riders in some capacity. Since fake rock bands are nearly always great, this is something we won't be complaining about. Even if The Midnight Riders' second album was released a year after the first one and was just a glorified expansion that we should boycott.

We're quite excited to see where this all could lead. Hopefully all sorts of fun things are in store.

[Thanks, Entrager!]