Stories by: AJ Glasser

Calling do-overs is usually the last resort of a sore loser, but the main character in Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective has plenty to be sore about in only the first three minutes of gameplay: Shot dead in a junkyard for reasons unknown, with absolutely no memories to clue him in.

The Entertainment Software Association has an early list of companies signed up for floorspace at E3 2011. Here's who made the list:

Blizzard sent out a press release announcing 4.7 million sales of World of Warcraft expansion Cataclysm in just one month. Guess how much it sold in just one day?

Leave it to Valve to make me laugh even as they're breaking my heart with a Portal 2 delay announcement.

Players pick up in Albion a generation after your hero from Fable II apparently fixed everything and kicked general ass. Fable III does an eloquent job of remembering your Fable II character's gender (from game start -- not post-gender-change potion), but not much else from the previous game carries over in a way that forbids newcomers to the series. After a run-in with your tyrant of an older brother, your character flees the sheltered castle life with your butler (John Cleese) and arms master (Bernard Hill) to begin raising an army to overthrow the king and take the throne for yourself.

Microsoft announced today that it broke the 1 million unit sale mark with Kinect, ten days after launch. Only 4 million to go before 2011 starts.

Media giant Viacom announced plans to sell Rock Band developer Harmonix during its third quarter financial results report this morning. Support for the franchise and Dance Central will continue.

Here's what I liked about Dance Central: It lied to me. For the most part, the only feedback I had from the game came in the form of a glowing circle that widens or shrinks to tell me how much I'm scoring on a move, an occasional red glow on a character's body part to tell me my corresponding body part wasn't matching up, or an aggressively positive street-talking boom box making excuses for my failures in tutorial mode ("Aw, this gaming is lying!" etc.).

Just in time for Halloween weekend, developer Rovio announced this morning that its sold a million downloads of Angry Birds Halloween in just six days on the App Store.

BlizzCon kicked off with a slew of standard announcements (20 years of Blizzard, 12 million World of Warcraft players, etc.), plus some newsy tidbits for fans of each of the company's three major franchises.