EA has opened the briefcase on Godfather 2, revealing that the sequel you can't refuse will ship for the Xbox 360, PS3 and PC in February 2009.

EA also shed a bit more detail on the previously revealed "Don's View," which promises to kiss the gameplay with a touch of strategy. Here you'll build up, expand, and defend crime rings against rival families by hand picking "Made Men," and sending them out onto the streets to do your bidding. Godfather 2 will also include the previous game's BlackHand control scheme, promising "more visceral hand-to-hand brutality" this time around. As the old saying goes, if you want something done right, do it yourself.

Electronic Arts announced this morning that it has launched a set of games with tips written in the style of the popular "For Dummies" book series. We've yet to try it, but our understanding is these titles are the regular games, but with enhanced help, and not just interactive For Dummies books. The first game, Poker For Dummies, is available now on EA's Pogo.com site for $20.

Pogo will add Solitaire For Dummies in September, Brain Training For Dummies in October, Sudoku For Dummies in November, and more in 2009. Poker For Dummies and Brain Training For Dummies will be in stores by October. There will also be a DS version, featuring the all-in-one game: Solitaire, Sudoku and crossword puzzles. Those who try it, let us know if this is a smrt* purchase.

*Freaking out over s-m-r-t? Grasp the reference after the break.

When PS3 owners are left out of EA's Red Alert 3, they won't just be left wanting for the game's exotically tough real-time strategy. They'll also miss out on the video game acting debut of English actress/model/singer Gemma Atkinson, who will exchange her flimsy lingerie for something a little more formal as Allied communications officer Lt. Eva McKenna.

EA's PR machine tells us that Atkinson is best recognized for her work on the British soap Hollyoaks, as well as one of the region's most recognized models, though to be fair we're just going to have to take their word for it. The company also notes that she'll be on hand at the UK's M Festival gaming event this Friday, just make sure that when she talks you look into her eyes, and not upon her huge ... tracts of land.

The PS2's library is about to get a bit more toxic, as Atlus announced that it will localize Japan's Poison Pink in North America, calling the strategy RPG by the less interesting title, Eternal Poison. In typical Atlus fashion, the game looks decidedly niche, though if its promise of "a uniquely dark aesthetic" and "classic tactical gameplay" isn't enough to win you over, note that each copy will also come packaged with a soundtrack CD as well.

Developed by Flight Plan, the studio behind Summon Night, Eternal Poison may be difficult to cure, but you have until the game arrives at retail on November 11 to get inoculated. Until then, check out some screenshots and the game's opening movie below.

Do you find it difficult to slip the fact that you conquered a certain titular Lord of Terror into your daily conversations? Feel insecure when bragging about your latest successful Zerg Rush to your colleagues? Blizzard's got your back -- in a recent interview with MTV Multiplayer, World of Warcraft lead designer Jeff Kaplan revealed that there will be achievements in Blizzard's next two highly anticipated projects, Diablo III and Starcraft II.

These achievements will join the recently revealed achievements for WoW (which will make their debut with the Wrath of the Lich King expansion) -- however, Kaplan revealed that eventually, achievements from the three games will be linked to your Blizzard account, forming a "Blizzard Level". Kaplan likened the system to the Xbox Live gamerscore -- only without all the embarrassment one must suffer after earning 780 points from Pimp My Ride.

Without an explanation for missing its Wednesday debut, Ticket to Ride Europe just arrived on XBLA to pick up customers for the weekend.

The expansion to the digitized European board game costs 600 MS points ($7.50), which is far cheaper than the $30+ set in real life. We haven't downloaded the Europe expansion yet, but let us know if the red/orange color similarity issue found in Ticket to Ride has been fixed.

Apparently, developing games for the PlayStation 3 is roughly comparable to that one time we pushed a wheelbarrow full of lovely, scantily clad ladies up and down the beach -- "exotic and tough." Speaking to VideoGamer.com, EALA producer Amer Ajami used those words to elaborate on the decision to halt PS3 development of the Hitler-free real-time strategy romp, Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3.

"We actually announced a PS3 version early on but that was when we were still doing a lot of technical exploration of the architecture," explained Ajami. "PS3 is a very powerful system but as you guys know it's very exotic and tough to develop for and our engine really at the time wasn't designed for PS3." Couch commanders need not give up all hope, though, as Ajami notes EA "might go back and do something with the PS3 later on." Also just like that time we pushed a wheelbarrow full of lovely, scantily clad ladies up and down the beach.*

*We went back to apologize.

Publisher Stardock has released the first trailer for Demigod, its upcoming "team-based action game with RTS and RPG elements" being developed by Gas Powered Games. The title will support one-on-one battles, but the game apparently shines in team play. The idea of a "team-based" RTS is still something we're wrapping our brains around; as multiplayer RTS is nothing new, but Demigod sounds like something different. For those who really want to get some hands-on time with the game, we were able to confirm the title will be at PAX.

Gamespot recently spoke with GPG and Stardock about the development of Demigod and we're definitely looking forward to learning more as the title continues its crusade for an early 2009 launch. We're still keeping our fingers crossed for an announcement that the game will make the leap to consoles. Check out the trailer after the break.

Buried deep down on a PlayStation Blog post about PixelJunk Eden and the Trophies available in the game, is an odd little paragraph about possible Trophy support for PixelJunk Monsters. Dylan Cuthbert, president of Q-games, developers of PJM and PJE, mentions he's been "inundated" with requests for Trophy support in Monsters. He says the company is looking into it and will badger the game's producer at Sony, Deborah Mars, "to get some dates set."

The information is a bit ambiguous and we're guessing is designed as a tease for an incoming PJM patch. Cuthbert also says the patch will "implement XMB music and a couple of other things." Considering we know PlayStation Blog posts are "checked," information like this doesn't just slip by. Looks like we're going to have to stop playing PJM Encore and wait 'til that Trophy patch gets added, because we're guessing the achievements won't be applied retroactively.

XBLA's excellent Ticket to Ride is ready to cross the Atlantic to receive the Europe expansion board next Wednesday. According to developer Playful Entertainment, the new continent will cost 600 MS points ($7.50) and add new gameplay elements like ferries, tunnels and train stations.

In the retail board game world, Ticket to Ride and Ticket to Ride: Europe -- which are sold separately -- would cost over $60, so we're not that sore about getting both on XBLA for $17.50. No word yet if the painfully close red/orange color blending will be fixed on the new board.

Monster Lab for the Wii is one of those games that is clearly designed for a kid, but could grab hold of many adults. The head of development studio Backbone Entertainment walked us through the RPG with turn-based combat and told us the title is designed for 10- 15-year-olds, but if he'd known in advance the response from the press during E3, the company would have upped its demographic target.

As it stands now, Monster Lab, which will be out this Halloween, has the player taking control of a monster that they'll upgrade over the course of the game. Various items will be collected in battles and can be fused together to form new parts for the monster back at the lab. There are mechanical, biological and chemical parts; each type being more or less susceptible to the others (mechanical > biological > chemical >mechanical). Also, the quality of new parts added to the monster will be determined through several minigames.

Real Time Strategies have never been a good fit for consoles, thanks to their over-reliance on a mouse and keyboard. The Creative Assembly are hoping to change that with Stormrise by creating a fully intuitive, pad-based control system. Unfortunately, we didn't get a chance to try the controls out for ourselves, but from what we saw it has some potential.

Selecting units is as simple as flicking the right analogue stick. Holding it in any direction will bring up a radar screen, showing your troops throughout the level relative to your currently selected unit. Rotating the right stick will let you highlight your units and, letting go of the stick, select them. Quickly "whipping" the right stick in any given direction will select the nearest unit in that direction, allowing you to switch between units swiftly.

Once selected, the game's viewpoint switches to above and behind the unit, allowing you to see what they see. They can then be moved to any visible ground using a 3D cursor. This seemed to work well, but there are also other methods of controlling units that seemed to work even better, depending on your play style.

"Attack the enemy base!"
"Yes sir, I'll enter a foot race."
"No, launch the missiles!"
"We'll harvest all nearby thistles."
"Attack the enemy units. Please, listen to me."
"Downloading latest DLC."
"Oh ... just forget it."

This doesn't happen in Tom Clancy's EndWar. It may be a sad comment on the history of in-game voice commands, but the best compliment one can give to Ubisoft's robust interface is that it works. There's no need to plead with it in a robotic tone or a slowed pace, and no voice training is required beforehand. Despite slipping in an "uh" here and there while contemplating orders, EndWar understood everything we said. Well, everything aside from the muttered curses prompted by our utter defeat.

Sid Meier's Civilization IV: Colonization is an interesting title in its marketing and presentation. The Civ IV tag is put on the game to give an idea of what to expect for those who don't remember the original Colonization, but the game is also clearly based on the Civilization IV engine and uses similar assets. Also, given some of the well-designed mods in Civ IV expansion, Beyond the Sword, we were wondering if Colonization would end up being a glorified mod or appear to be an actual new game? We still haven't come to a conclusion on that question, but there's a lot in this stand-alone product that certainly goes beyond what we'd call "a mod."

For starters, and it really bites that we can't show the UI or find videos, the interface and music are different from Civilization IV. Also, the graphics have been given a nice boost and, seeing them in person, it's certainly noticeable. Senior Producer Jesse Smith also walked us through several other things that make Colonization different from Civ IV.

After all this time we finally got to touch Halo Wars and ... it was good. There's visual polishing to be done, but the user interface (UI) is as intuitive as developer Ensemble Studios has been hyping since (what feels like) the time of the Forerunners. This is an RTS game clearly made for a console first.

The UI is incredibly intuitive. Left analog moves the camera, right analog zooms, A selects, X is the move/attack button and Y activates special moves. If you've played other RTS games ported to the Xbox 360, this is a very different experience.