Before Electronic Arts, MTV Games, and Harmonix would hand over a preview copy of Rock Band 2 to us, we’d to sign a paper in blood stating we wouldn’t speak details about or grab video from certain things. Among those things: Guns N’ Roses “Shackler’s Revenge” (never heard it!) and the game’s new cinematic intro (never seen it before!).

The Guns N’ Roses track made sense; it’s to be the world-premiere of a track off of the any-day-now album, Chinese Democracy. But the intro? What’s the big deal? But now we get it: along with their exclusive reveal of forthcoming album downloadable content, Entertainment Weekly also had dibs on revealing the game’s opening.

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Bethesda’s Pete Hines snapped a few mobile shots of the Fallout 3 booth at the Penny Arcade Expo and posted them on his Facebook this afternoon. When I saw them, I thought two things. First, holy crap — they really went all out with the booth. Then I remembered — Fallout 3 is totally playable at the show starting tomorrow!

Yup, PAX will mark the first public hands-on of the saliva-inducing title, and Bethesda will have six kiosks set up in their booth. Considering there will be more than 50,000 people at PAX this year, that means everyone will have approximately 30 seconds to try it out before another sweaty nerd knocks them out of the way.

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We’ve known for a while now that Team ICO have a PlayStation 3 title up their sleeves, but the studio has remained as tight-lipped and mysterious as their previous titles. Fans eager to be enchanted again are waiting patiently for word of the team’s next project, and it seems that the wait will soon be at an end. How soon? Soon … that is how soon.

Kotaku asked Sony’s Shuhei Yoshida if the mystery title could be ready by the Tokyo Game Show, but the answer was not conclusive: “I cannot tell, but But I can say that they’ve been working very hard since the release of Shadow of the Colossus.”

Well, that doesn’t say a whole lot, does it? All he could state was that we would see the next Team ICO game “soon,” and then he presumably rode off into the night on a black steed with Vengar from the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon. I have no idea why I said that.

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Really, does anything else matter besides The Last Guy? Well, for you hardcore Warhawk fans, I guess the Fallen Star add-on, priced at $7.99, will be worthwhile. But seriously, just drop the $10 on The Last Guy — it will probably be worth it. You’ll find out when you read the upcoming Destructoid review, anyways.

Demo-land gives us a Soul Calibur 4 and NHL 09 demo, of which I can say…save your HDD space for something else, like Xam’d: Lost Memories or any of the free videos they’re offering this week, like with the Leipzig LittleBigPlanet and MotorStorm trailers or the several Facebreaker audition videos.

There’s a huge list over at PlayStation.Blog, but really, all you need is The Last Guy. Or Bionic Commando: Rearmed if you’re a little slow.

As always, Destructoid community member wilbo has you European folks covered in the cblogs with his weekly PSN updates for you folks across the pond.

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An 18-year old male was punched in the face with a set of brass knuckles and received a kicking from four men over an alleged dispute concerning the ownership of a PlayStation 3. The young man apparently walked up to a group of thirty men in Greensburg and briefly spoke with them before four of their number instigated the assault.

Jamie Fabiszewski Jr, Adam Reese, David Weimerskir and Nicholas Anthony Iapaluccci have had arrest warrants issued for them by Greensburg police. Fabiszewski is said to have started the beating, breaking a bone near one of the unidentified teenager’s eyes.

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Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences president Joseph Olin has singled out Blu-ray as yet another difference maker that may eventually lose its edge, going the way of the third party exclusive. While stating that the format still has some short-term advantages, in the long run it won’t matter.

“I look at Blu-ray being the obvious short-term differentiator, but if everything goes to digital download — and over time, it will — then the Blu-ray device no longer has the same competitive advantage, or the benefit is not as strong as the feature is,” stated Olin. The AIAS president admitted that there is a noticeable difference in visual quality with Blu-ray, but questioned whether that was enough to make the PS3 a more attractive offer.

I think that, although being a cheap Blu-ray player has helped the PS3 a little, we’ve seen that the promise of Blu-ray enhanced visuals hasn’t been enough in the past to capture the imagination of gamers. Only now, when there is actually some good software to take advantage of Blu-ray, do we see the PS3 gathering steam.

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