A few days ago we reported on a bunch of Halo 3 Achievement pictures coming out of PAX. Ultimately, the photos have been proven real. Bungie has announced that they are rolling out Title Update 2 this month, which will add new map-pack oriented Achievements to the game, a plethora of bug fixes, better ‘banhammering’, and playlist ratings.

Of course the juiciest announcement is the addition of the Achievements. All of the new rewards the game will give out can be earned on the Legendary Maps and Halo 3 campaign mode. We have a full listing after the break, but for fun here’s a few:

• Vidmaster Challenge: Lightswitch (0 points) – Get to the rank of Lieutenant in any playlist in the new EXP progression system.
• Double Double (25 points) – On a Legendary map, get two Double Kills during any ranked or social match.

The new playlist ratings will break apart Trueskill values from experience. The idea is that players will define how good they are in specific game modes and the playlist will adjust matches accordingly. Unfortunately, the new ratings can’t separate voice from hard data, so you will still end up playing with that particularly rude and chatty 12-year-old.

From chiptunes to regular old rock and roll, the influence of videogames can be felt far and wide. As much as I love the random mention of Contra or bleep from an Atari, however, sometimes someone does something that really sticks with you. Enter a little band called the Mountain Goats, who composed a tune called "Thank You Mario But Our Princess Is in Another Castle".

This is a song for a Saturday in every way. From their six-song EP Black Pear Tree, it's equal parts wistful, sweet and delightful. Best of all, the band explained that the song is written from Toad's point of view. How cool is that? I love the idea of considering how secondary characters might see these beloved stories.

You can download it for free here, but don't blame me if you find yourself humming it later in the day (or if you listen to it in your car on repeat). It's just the kind of song you won't easily forget.

[Thanks, Sharpless!]

I'll tell you what an Owl Boy is, son. In this case, it's a 2D platform game coming to to PC and Xbox 360. It also looks deliciously retro and its main character is ... well ... an Owl ... Boy.

Owl Boy is a 2D platforming adventure for the Xbox 360 and Windows PCs. Go with Otus on a free flying quest into the clouds and discover the secrets of the floating islands while preserving the Owls' integrity...

The game is being developed by D-Pad Studio and is described as a "free-roaming flying game with dungeons." It is to be entered into the IGF, where hopefully we'll see much more of a game that's already making the retroheads and indie crowd excited. 

Looks charming, and I really couldn't be happier that so many sidescrolling platforming and action titles seem to be coming out lately. With Braid and Castle Crashers already launched, The Dishwasher, Prinny and VanillaWare's new Wii title all on the horizon, and now this little beauty, fans of a once-dead genre have a lot to be happy about.

[Via Kotaku]

What? She's an anthropomorphic bat, yes. This I understand. But she also looks like a total slag who'd go all the way for a handful of Pringles. That makes her worth a deposit in the tossbank as far as I am concerned.

Anyway, with that ghastly business out of the way, it's time to present these new Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood images. It's a shedload of character renders, a stupid amount of near-identical box shots (different languages oh my God!) and pretty paintings for you to enjoy. You don't really need to see the Sonic Chronicles logo in French, but I've posted it anyway because that's how we roll at Destructoid. We roll French. 

Yesterday, Electronic Arts announced a veritable slew of games slated for the iPhone. All of them are fairly unique EA products, and should hopefully toss some much-needed quality into the already endless number of shoddy titles available via iTunes.

The nine games announced are Yahtzee Adventures, EA Mini Golf, Lemonade Tycoon, Mahjong, Monopoly: Here and Now, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09, Need for Speed Undercover and the previously announced SimCity and The Sims 3. In addition to those landmark titles, EA also dropped that Spore Origins will be available on September 7.

What does this mean for the lovely iPhone? Hopefully a bunch of games that are better than the majority of the games that I have had the opportunity to sludge through. I never exactly got wrapped up into the potential of the iPhone to take the place of a real handheld gaming device like the Nintendo DS or PlayStation Portable, but it’s going to take decent first-party games like some of the games EA announced to at least boost the iPhone’s saturated library.

[via 1UP]

We've seen plenty of gorgeous looking PS3 and Xbox 360 screens for Sonic Unleashed, but how is the Wii version looking? Worry not, the millions of you who are frantically pacing around the room, worrying about this tense subject, for we have a gallery of screens to set your nervous minds at rest.

The graphics are how you'd expect them to be -- they mimic the style of previous screens, and are just as colorful, but are a Hell of a lot more jaggy. The 360/PS3 screens look rather gorgeous -- these ones, not so much. 

Ah well, most people have doomed this game to failure before it's even come out anyway, so I don't suppose it matters much. I still don't think the Werehog stuff is all that bad, you know. Since Sonic's 3D games have never handled the speed thing too well, I have a feeling that the action/platform elements of the Werehog stuff will probably prove to Unleashed's most successful element.

We all know that Spore is a special game, regardless of how it is being received by the media and gamers alike. The little bits and pieces of technology that have been injected into the title that compose its real-time strategy or life simulation portions are distinct and have obviously taken a ton of time to create. Because of Spore’s inherent uniqueness and its pliability as a game, Electronic Arts’ President, Frank Gibeau, has been thinking that Spore could be licensed out as a platform that other developers can use to build their own games.

He mentioned his desire to possibly farm out Spore in an interview with Kotaku’s Brian Crescente. Gibeau was obviously excited about the game and the possibility of tossing it out for other developers:

What's so beautiful about Spore is that it's extremely malleable. You could add RPG or action, you could take it to different platforms, like (Web-page) flash games, the PlayStation 3, the Xbox 360, Nintendo's Wii…It travels well to other platforms.

I can’t imagine anything more interesting that could be done with Spore. Having other developers taking apart its Civilization portion, or even evolution engine, could lead to excessively unique takes that supersede the initial experience of Spore. Perhaps 3DRealms could license out the platform and create an illustrative history of the Duke Nukem Forever development process. The possibilities are endless.