Gamescom 2011

Na'Vi, the Ukrainian Dota 2 team has been crowned the first ever Dota 2 champion over team EHOME, winning a staggering one million dollars at the Gamescom tournament in Cologne, Germany. Na'Vi battled it out against 15 of the world's top Dota 2 teams, showcasing amazing talent and strategy.

Dota 2 is based on a Warcraft 3 mod called Defense of the Ancients. The game is currently being developed by Valve, with one of the original developers, IceFrog. In order to generate hype for their new title Valve threw a one million dollar tournament called The International.

The International was the first time that Dota 2 has been seen by the public, and for the most part, most eSports fans were quite happy with what Valve has done with the title. The attention to detail that Valve showed with the new design of the game, the heroes, and the animations was extremely impressive and reminiscent of the original game.

Starting in the Winner's Bracket, Na'Vi started the finals one game up against EHOME. The final series was extremely intense, as EHOME managed to tie it up by winning the first game. But, with their aggressive strategy and confidence, Na'Vi was able to surge back to win two games in a row, to become the first Dota 2 champions in the best of five format.

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Escape Plan is a quirky PlayStation Vita puzzler that presents the world in rich black and white.  Along with a unique visual style, Escape Plan takes advantage of some of the more esoteric technical capabilities of the Vita. Here's a sample of  Sinan Kubba's preview from GamesCom 2011:

One or two of the puzzles I saw showed off how the game uses some of the other tech features of Vita. One I saw, which was shown a bit of in the Sony trailer, involved a gas canister for Lil to use. Tapping on it made Lil suck on the canister and suddenly fill up with helium like a giant balloon. Lil floated up through a hole in the ceiling into a new room, but to get to the exit I had to tilt the Vita to the right to make Lil float along through another hole in the right-hand wall. If I wanted to propel the inflated Lil a bit quicker, I could pinch him using the touch screen and back touch, getting the balloon to "fart" his way across as the screen – that’s the dev’s choice of word, not mine.

Read the entirety of our Escape Plan preview.

Upcoming snowboarding game SSX features some amazing technical innovation along with it's fresh-powder, "duuuuude" vibe. Sinan Kubba was on the floor at GamesCom 2011 to put the game through its paces, and here's a taste of his preview:

"The technology going into the upcoming revamp of the flamboyant snowboarding franchise SSX is absolutely insane. The new game is using NASA satellite data in a program that EA Burnaby call Mountain Man to visualize around 150 real-life snowboarding ranges, including ones in Africa, the Rockies, and Alaska. If that’s not enough, the interface to select which range you want to ride down isn’t your typical menu-scrolling affair as that would not be enough for the developers. Instead, you navigate a globe powered by Google Earth. If that’s not abuse of privilege, then I don’t know what is."

Check out the rest of our SSX preview right here.

Twist Control is the name of the new Xbox 360 dashboard according to Robin Burrowes, Xbox Live product marketing manager for EMEA. The new dashboard is supposedly coming out later this year.

Due to the massive amounts of content on the Xbox Live Marketplace, nearing 20,000, the new dashboard was necessary to make it look less cluttered and easier to use. Twist will make it easier to browse for this content as well as for games.

“Hopefully the new dash will show this service proposition goes beyond gaming,” said Burrowes. “We’ll never lose our focus on that gaming audience. In fact, developing the investment infrastructure to develop programs like cloud storage and Facebook posting and the beacons, are three examples of continuing to invest in that space."

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At Gamescom 2011 we got to check out one of this holiday's most anticipated titles, the PlayStation 3 exclusive Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception. In this demo from Cologne, we get to go through an amazing action sequence that finds our hero Nathan Drake fighting for his life on a crashing plane.

"With the rest of the plane’s crew now fully alerted to what’s been going on in the cargo hold minutes before, what with all the volatile cargo flying around the plane, now Drake doesn’t just have to deal with getting back onto the plane but with avoiding the gunfire raining down from above. As he climbs up the netting, a huge crate flies down, with a quick dodge across saving the explorer’s bacon. One of the gunners above is not so fortunate when he’s thrown overboard by another crate, not that Drake cares when the guy is flung towards him. Drake cheekily grabs the gunner, nicks his machine gun, and kicks him down to the abyss below with a jovial “See yah!”

To find out what happens to Nathan next, be sure to check out the rest of our Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception Gamescom preview.

UPDATE: Well, that was a bit of a bust. In spite of having been hyped by 2K games as a "demonstration of Borderlands 2,"  and a "world premier online look at our much-anticipated return to Pandora," Gearbox software's Borderlands 2 live stream from Gamescom 2011 didn't feature much actual footage of the game, just a vew moments of blurry, off-the-screen footage.  Gamers got some fairly general info about the upcoming game from Gearbox's Randy Pitchford, though. Click the "Read More" tag for the video.

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The winners of Gamescom 2011 have been announced and include prolific AAA titles like Battlefield 3, Star Wars: The Old Republic, Fifa 12. The winners were chosen by an independent expert jury from the field of publishing and media and they chose the best products.

The winners came from a total of eight categories: Best PC Game, Best Console Game, Best Mobile Game, Best Online Game, Best Browser Game, Best Family Game, Best Hardware/Hardware Accessories, and Best of Gamescom (selected by the jury from all categories).

And the winners are...

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The adorably awesome PlayStation 3 exclusive LittleBigPlanet is coming to the PlayStation Vita and it makes use of every facet of Sony's new handheld. Whether you're using the touch controls, the back touch controls, or the tilt controls, the mini-games in LittleBigPlanet Vita are sure to please all LBP fans.

"The tech demo level that developer Media Molecule has put together for LittleBigPlanet Vita shows off almost every facet of the console and it does so with real style. The touch controls, for example, lets you move green-colored blocks around the environment. This lets you do things like move platforms around for Sackboy to climb onto, spin wheels for him to cling onto, and drag back a catapult which shoots him into the air in a little wooden vessel with a flag tail behind him spelling "LBP." Meanwhile, tilt controls help the stitched hero to scoot down a wire, slide blocks down a gradient, and so on."

Be sure to check out the rest of our LittleBigPlanet Vita preview from GamesCom 2011 to learn even more about the game and to get a sneak peek at two very innovative mini-games coming to the title.

Wildstar is the new MMORPG from Carbine Studios. With games like World of Warcraft, Fallout, and City of Heroes on the creators' resumes, they definitely have the chops to make a great next gen MMO. Wildstar takes point from the MMO classics and innovates upon them in a positive way.

"As I guide my Aurin through a newbie area, an icy plain sprinkled with the wreckage of a space ship. Immediately, I get a quest to place a beacon on top of a hill, but blocking my way to the hilltop are intermittent tides of an avalanche. But traversing the avalanche isn't just a game hindrance. If I do it quickly and skillfully enough, I can complete a Challenge. These Challenges pop up throughout the game, spawned by actions like investigating certain areas or killing creatures prolifically. They can be like the avalanche one or more combat-orientated, like having to kill a certain number of creatures in a certain amount of time or with only so much ammo. Completing the challenges brings rewards and further challenges, and even in my short play through, they prove a fun distraction away from the thrust of the main quest."

To get a brief glimpse on the world of the Nexus, check out our full Wildstar preview from GamesCom 2011.

Words like beautiful, stunning, and breathtaking are all good ways to describe the Guild Wars 2 trailer from Gamescom 2011. Featuring almost five minutes of actual gameplay, glimpses of some of the amazing architecture and landscapes in the game, all with the painterly aesthetic of ArenaNet's MMO, this trailer really gets us hyped. Not to mention there is a huge, epic bone dragon scene.

Guild Wars 2 is coming out exclusively for the PC. For more information on GW2, be sure to check out our Guild Wars 2 preview from Gamescom 2011.

In the Prototype 2 Gamescom 2011 trailer, you are Blackwatch and you will not fail to capture Alex Mercer and James Heller. This trailer for the upcoming action game features a recap of everything that happened in the first game, and what your new mission is in New York Zero.

Prototype 2 is coming out for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on April 24, 2012.

Along with learning all about Guild Wars 2 new structured PvP mode, Conquest, during Gamescom 2011 we also got to check out what else NCSoft and ArenaNet are doing with the fantasy MMORPG to take the title to revolutionary heights. Everything from character creation, to end game, Guild Wars 2 tries to elevate the MMO genre. We continue to be impressed by what we see from this PC exclusive.

"What’s so impressive about Guild Wars 2 here at GamesCom is how complete a game it looks. Be it in the first few minutes of noobing through a character’s origins story in its fantasy world, or be it reigning terror across the endgame areas against armies of enemies and behemoths of bosses, Guild Wars 2 has something uniquely different about it. Thing is, a lot of the ideas in Guild Wars 2 aren’t wholly original; that shouldn’t surprise given that the MMO space only ever gets busier. What GW2 does, and it does it leagues better than Rift did earlier this year (and Rift did it pretty well), is to take those ideas and really and truly run with them in a new, different direction."

Be sure to check out our Guild Wars 2 Gamescom Preview to learn more about this polished MMO.

The story lines of Assassin's Creed's assassins are starting to blur. At Gamescom 2011, Ubisoft revealed a brand new Assassin's Creed: Revelations trailer. In it Desmond, Ezio and Altair dubstep their way through history. You'll play as all three characters in this installment of the AC series. It will be the final time you'll get to don Ezio and Altair's capes.

Assassin's Creed: Revelations will be released on November 15, 2011.

One game on almost everyone's radar is Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary edition. Not everyone is a Halo fan, but most can respect the Halo series, especially the multiplayer. We recently had the chance to get some hands-on time with Halo 1 HD's multiplayer. Check it out.

"Battle Creek takes the tried and true Beaver Creek, but adds some new elements. The two bases on either side of the map now have a cave system behind them that contain teleporters to the other side of the maps, and the former teleporter locations have been replaced with air vents. This, thankfully, kills the 'porter camping that took place on this map, where players used to toss the flag up through the skylight to a waiting player above who would drop down, port, and quickly score. There are two entrances to both caves, which also contain a health pack in addition to the teleporter.

Other than that, I'm happy to report that the new Battle Creek is gorgeous. It's strange to see this and then go back and look at the old Beaver Creek, which I always thought looked impressive. It doesn't even compare now with the HD graphics and the Halo: Reach armor abilities, which can unbalance this map a bit as well. The jetpack makes you the king of this map, particularly if you know where the sniper rifle and rocket launcher spawn. Yes, I'm a rocket whore. Sue me."

Make sure to check out the entire Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary edition preview.

"The International", also known as the Dota 2 one million dollar tournament from GamesCom 2011 is starting today, and we'll have the live stream of the entire event, straight from Cologne, Germany. Sixteen of the world's top Dota teams will be competing for a chance at one of the largest prize pools in eSports history.

For those who aren't familiar with Dota 2, it is the sequel to the WarCraft 3 mod "Defense of the Ancients" which gave life to the entire moba genre that has been dominating the eSports scene lately with games like League of Legends and Heroes of Newerth. Dota 2 is being developed by Valve, with the help of one of the developers of Dota, Icefrog. The International will be the first time that Dota 2 has ever been shown to the public, and the competition will be fierce with this much money on the line.

The tournament will uses a group stage for the first day, which will feed into a winner and loser brackets for the following days.

All of the games will be commentated, so even if you've never seen Dota before, these professional commentators will keep you up to speed with play by plays on all of the action.

To watch the Commentated version of the Dota 2 Live Stream, click on the blank button between the quality settings and full screen button and switch it from "No Commentary" to the language of your choice!

Are there any Dota fans in the house? I have to know what your initial thoughts are on Dota 2. Let me know below as you watch the live stream, or via my Twitter.