Grasshopper Manufacture announced the very welcome news that it will release a soundtrack CD containing Akira Yamaoka's full score on Shadows of the Damned. The pre-order soundtrack was nice, but incomplete; this disc will have all 21 tracks, including "Shadows of the Damned," performed with The Damned.

In addition, GHM will release a guide book called "Kurayami Magazine," named after an earlier iteration of the game. It features a long interview with Suda 51 and original character designs.

Both items are listed on the Japanese GHM store website, with the soundtrack available tomorrow and the book on September 9. Neither has been posted on the American store yet, and we're asking-slash-begging Grasshopper for more information.

Dropping shiny new loot right there in the title, "Treasures of the Sun" hopes to entice you into another quest and a new story arc for Dungeon Siege 3. It will be available for $9.99 on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC this October.

Your quest for the star's trinkets takes you into the Aranoi desert and into an abandoned abbey, where you'll benefit from a couple of game-wide enhancements. The level cap is raised from 30 to 35 (giving you ample excuse to destroy the expansion's new monsters), talent and proficiency points may be reallocated, and a new enchanting system lets you beef up weapons and armor.

Combine those offerings with some additional offensive and healing abilities, and it sounds like the party's well prepared to find all the sun's gifts -- save for the one that you peel off a week later.

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Interested in being the master of a whole world -- or being a total slave to the rules of one? Two games newly added to GOG's DRM-free lineup will let you experience both. Populous lets you build a world and a civilization, and then ... you know, unleash natural disasters upon it.

Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar puts you in the role of a hero who must save the land of Britannia while adhering strictly to eight virtues. Thrift isn't one of those virtues, but it's still something you can practice with this game, as GOG is giving it away for free! If you want to pay for some Ultimas, the first three are also up.

When Glen Schofield and Michael Condrey left Dead Space developer Visceral Games at EA, it was rumored that they'd take the Call of Duty experience into the third-person perspective. Then some... things, happened. Sledgehammer Games went radio-silent and a year later, it was revealed that Schofield and friends were working with Infinity Ward to complete Modern Warfare 3.

But what about our dreams of a third person Call of Duty? What about them? "We came on board to make a third person action adventure game, in the Call of Duty franchise," Schofield said in a video feature on Gamespot, "and we were working on it about six months." Condrey was matter of fact about the reasoning behind Sledgehammer's action-adventure title. "There are a lot of fans out there who enjoy games like Uncharted, so you can imagine that genre meeting a world-class franchise."

Condrey decided to rub it in a little more. "We had a prototype together that was pretty compelling, and it looked really good." But the chance to help make Activision's big gun shoot straight has probably killed its would-be offshoot. "The opportunity to work on the biggest thing in the industry with... Infinity Ward, that's demonstrated that they know how to do exceptional software, was just an opportunity we couldn't (pass up)."

When Namco Bandai and Tecmo Koei put up a countdown site for a new collaboration, we guessed cynically that it was another Dynasty Warriors Gundam game. It looks like we were half right, which means we were twice as cynical as we needed to be.

According to Andriasang, scans from Jump magazine reveal a PS3-exclusive Dynasty Warriors-style game based on the One Piece manga/anime series, called One Piece Kaizoku Musou, or One Piece Pirate Musou ("Musou" being the name of the "Warriors" series). Nothing was revealed about the title, except that a video will be shown during TGS -- but, since it's a Dynasty Warriors game, you already know how to play it. This time, you'll be defeating waves of enemy soldiers using your stretchy arms, which is different.

[Image: One Piece Official]

Coincidentally, on the eve of Activision's Call of Duty XP live event, IGN spoke with ex-Infinity Ward leads Vince Zampella and Jason West about their new studio, Respawn Entertainment, and the next best thing to major game reveals: Employee numbers. "55 full-time employees," Zampella revealed, "and then we have some contractors [...] 4 or 5 people right now that are contracting."

"That's boring," you protest. "What about the guns?" you demand. We know, we want to know all about the guns in Respawn's game as well, but for now we've got to divine as much as we can from the crystal ball of employee headcount. "We'll get bigger, but we're slowing growing," Zampella rhymed. "The trick there is it's always just time versus size of the team. So you can take longer and have fewer people or you can get bigger and do some things faster," West added.

If you'll allow us to read between the lines here, it should be clear: Respawn is following the Nice & Smooth school of hiring, meaning its new IP won't be coming out anytime soon if they hire slow ... or it will, if they hire quick. "So if things have to take a little longer they could take a little longer," West suggested, "and if we're fortunate enough to find more awesome talent then we'll do that." So Q4 2012 then? 2013 maybe? We give up.

This is just a quick reminder that Bungie Aerospace's first project, Crimson: Steam Pirates, is now available on iPad for the excellent sum of no dollars. We had assumed that the Hairbrained Schemes title was about a band of buccaneers out to steal your wine-stained dry cleaning. It turns out, however, that it's actually an action RTS game in a Steampunk 1800s setting. You'll follow the high-seas adventures of General Thomas Blood as he conducts ship battles against opposing fleets.

You can find out more about the top-down action in the video above. Or, you know, you could just download the game, what with it being free and all.

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It take long time, but Bloggy Monster finally allowed to write article for Joystiq again. Finding freelance work really brutal sometimes. Anyway, Bloggy Monster here to tell you about new video with Tim Schafer and Bloggy Monster personal idol, Cookie Monster.

Tim drop cookie in Xbox, then Cookie Monster EAT Xbox! Oh, Cookie Monster, you still got it.

Do you still find it difficult to reconcile the critically adored, Western-developed Deus Ex: Human Revolution with the Square Enix logo on the game's packaging? You'll get over it in the coming years, as La Presse Affaires reports that Eidos Montréal aims to double in size and accomodate 350 additional employees by 2015.

Though Square Enix has yet to officially announce such plans, the report states that a tentative agreement has been made between the Japanese company (which acquired Eidos in 2009) and financier Investissement Québec. The deal, when solidified, will grant tax credits and a $2 million subsidy to Square.

Earlier reports suggested that Square would establish a new studio once talks with several Canadian provincial governments had concluded. According to La Presse, it has opted to boost its existing Eidos location from 330 to 680 employees over the next four years. Square will reportedly increase staff count by 100 toward the end of 2012.

This news bodes well for Eidos Montréal's two current projects, particularly for Th14f. One of those 680 employees should be able to come up with a proper logo.

[Thanks, Phillipe.]

Nintendo provided a bit more detail today about its pre-TGS event on September 13. The "Nintendo 3DS Conference 2011" will be a "product announcement conference," which doesn't really tell us what kind of product. Still, we'd bet more on "some new games" than "new hardware," unless there's another color variant or something.

Best of all, you won't have to be in Tokyo to find out what's going on. Nintendo will stream the event on Ustream and Nico Nico, allowing even those of us who can't make it into the Tokyo Big Site to get the news as it happens. It's September 13 at 12 noon in Japan, which translates to September 12 at 11PM Eastern time.

Later this year or early next year, Uber Entertainment's going to try and thread a fairly dangerous needle. The studio, which saw success with its very first product, the XBLA and PC shooter Monday Night Combat, is trying to branch the franchise out into the increasingly populated free-to-play space. To do so successfully, it'll need to maintain its community's good will with some substantial -- but not too substantial -- changes.

"Super Monday Night Combat is going to be the same basic world," Uber Entertainment creative director John Comes explained to us at PAX last week. "We still have the same kind of lightheartedness, with the announcer and the mascot -- that same happy, fast, punchy game." The development team won't leave the formula entirely untouched, however. "Some of the balance has changed," Comes added. "Mainly, the lethality has been lowered a bit, which we've found makes for more frantic fights."

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We're sure you're already feverishly working on your T-shirt designs for Joystiq; we just wanted to remind you that you've only got until Sunday to submit yours. One winner is going to get their T-shirt made by Joystiq and get a console of their choice with five randomly selected games, so get to designing. Complete rules and submission guidelines are after the break.

Just a note: Don't feel like you have to prominently feature our logo. As our boy Petey M. demonstrates, our last winner had a really cool image with the Joystiq name just sort of lovingly placed at the side. Good luck!

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We didn't have to wait long for the suspense to end regarding XSEED's mystery game: it is, in fact, Corpse Party for PSP, and it will be released as a download this fall.

Corpse Party, originally created in RPG maker before being remade for PSP by publisher 5pb, is the story of a group of high schoolers "trapped in a haunted elementary school filled with the decaying corpses and tormented souls of countless children who'd mysteriously vanished from the Japanese countryside years, months or sometimes only days prior."

Even though the game is presented primarily in 16-bit sprite-based RPG style, the premise definitely has the potential to be very spooky, with XSEED promising "decidedly uncensored horrors." In addition, a "3D audio" gimmick adds atmospheric, directional sound.

Check out a trailer above, but be warned: there is some disturbing imagery. Just in case you didn't figure that out from the game's title.

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It looks like the MOBA genre will be getting a new entry in just under two weeks. Developer Petroglyph has announced that its minion-stomper Rise of Immortals will officially launch on September 12. Like its closest kin, League of Legends and Heroes of Newerth, Rise of Immortals will be free-to-play and will allow users to purchase new characters and items with the money of real Earth.

Petroglyph reminds prospective online gladiators that there's still time to take part in the open beta. Doing so will reward players with 1,000 Petroglyph Coins (worth more than ten dollars) and an exclusive "King of Bling" character skin, which the studio describes as "a dazzling gold version of the robot-suited Psychozen." Seems like a pretty good deal for anyone thinking about trying the game -- and, really, who doesn't want to be dazzled once in a while?

You can register for the beta right here.

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Looking for something new to play on the cheap? Well, Amazon has a bunch of deals it'll be rolling out all day long, starting with discounted copies of Nail'd and Dungeon Siege 3 for the Xbox 360. Here's the breakdown:

• 11am PT: Dungeon Siege 3 on Xbox 360 ($34.99) and Nail'd on Xbox 360 ($9.99)
• 1pm PT: "The Man of Steel always gets the babes" (Duke Nukem?) and "This Collector's Edition comes straight from Vault Tec" (Fallout 3?)
• 3pm PT: "Battle your way across this limited edition's heat-blasted wasteland" (Fallout: New Vegas?) and "Get ready for the sequel by playing this original role playing shooter" (Borderlands?)

Need for Speed: Shift is the one constant today. Amazon is offering the PS3 version for a reasonable $9.99.

Saddle up your horses, load up your guns, and grease that completely ridiculous mustache: Red Dead Redemption's next, totally free DLC pack is coming in a little under two weeks. The previously announced "Myths and Mavericks" expansion will hit the PSN and XBLM on September 13, adding a whole slew of new multiplayer maps, modes and characters. Check out a full list of the newcomers after the jump.

We're not sure how much of the original Red Dead community has stuck around to indulge in these new offerings, but if there's anything that can bring errant sheep back into the fold, it's the glorious, waxy soupcatcher of Landon Ricketts, pictured above. Oh, to be a fly on that mustache.

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