Leading free-to-play mobile, desktop and social game developer Game Insight today announced an incredible bonanza of Thanksgiving fun, stuffing several of its hit titles full of themed in-game treats, events and items. The bonuses and extras will appear over the Thanksgiving holiday across multiple platforms and app stores including the App Store, Google Play, Facebook, Windows Phone Store, Windows Store and Amazon Appstore.
Some of the smash-hit titles receiving bonuses include The Tribez, Sunshine Bay, Cloud Raiders, 2020: My Country, Airport City and Mystery Manor. Each game will feature a wide array of Thanksgiving related treats including turkey meals, Turkey statues in cities, Thanksgiving- themed quests and collections; there’s also a special appearance of the ferocious Turkinator boss in Cloud Raiders whose flock will leave your base in ruins if you don’t defeat it.
The full list of games includes:

• 2020: My Country
• Airport City
• Big Business Deluxe
• Cloud Raiders
• Flower House
• Legacy of Transylvania
• Love and Dragons
• Mirrors of Albion
• Mysterior
• Mystery Manor HD
• Paradise Island
• Sunshine Bay
• The Tribez

More information can be found at http://www.game-insight.com

Simple question: How much do you love The Hobbit? Let’s say a little. How much do you love free shit? Oh, you dig that a lot, huh? Okay, how about not one but two, YES TWO, free-to-play games based on The Hobbit?!

I lost you all, didn’t I. Not that I can necessarily blame you all. The notion of getting onboard the free-to-play bandwagon feels outright skeezy at this point. I mean, seriously, they’re free-to-play. What goodness could ever come out of such madness? According to some of my friends, quite a lot. See a bunch of them have been playing Gotham City Imposters for free on Steam and they’re telling me, as far as free games go, that it ain’t half bad. They might be crazy but dammit, maybe they’ve just gotten over the stigma of those horrible FTP games that are more ‘free to start, pay to finish’ and found something worthwhile.

But back to the point, developer Kabam has joined forces with mega-giant Warner Bros. Interactive to produce The Kingdoms of Middle Earth for mobile devices and Armies of the Third Age for web browsers. Both games will be based on film director Peter Jackson’s upcoming trilogy of films based on the popular book The Hobbit, which all geeks should recognize as the precursor to The Lord of the Rings.

The Hobbit films are among the most anticipated entertainment launches of all time[.] Kabam’s unique ability to blend the art of game design and the science of free-to-play distribution makes us a natural fit to partner with Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment to deliver thrilling games via the Web and mobile devices for The Hobbit film fans around the world.

–Kevin Chou, CEO of Kabam

Sounds interesting at least. You can sign up to be part of the beta for Armies of the Third Age here.

I know, I know, I’m a day late. Cut me some slack, I broke 3 toes today. No punchline here, only pain, kinda like this weeks releases, amiright?! Yeah? No? Psch, whatever.

Coming out this week:

Dead or Alive 5 — September 25th for PS3 & X360
If you like women in bikini’s kicking the living shit out of each other, you’ll probably like this! If you’re more into ‘the art’ of fighting games, though, you might wanna skip this and keep to Tekken Tag Tournament 2, which I hear is pretty good.

Disney Princess: My Fairytale Adventure — September 25th for PC, Wii & 3DS
What with the growing general interest in broniism and whatnot, I imagine any degrading comments I could make about these sorts of kid-friendly games will sooner or later result in management calling down to me from their cloud of dollars and telling me to cool down a little. That day hasn’t arrived yet, though, so if you’re expecting any real information about this game…what is wrong with you?! Ah, I kid, I kid. I actually watched a couple of episodes of My Little Pony with my niece a few months ago and you know what? That show is entertaining enough that I get why some people would be attracted to it. Apart from obscene animated crushes, though, I don’t know what people’s deal is with Disney Princesses…

DragonBall Z for Kinect — September 25th for X360
Namco Bandai refused to respond to my query as to whether DBZ for Kinect would cost “OVER NINE-THOUSAND (DOLLARS)”.  I probably wouldn’t have responded to such a question either, to be fair.

FIFA Soccer 13 – September 25th for PC, PS3, PSP, X360, 3DS
Over here in Britain, this game is just referred to as FIFA because ‘soccer’ is not a word. You crazy Americans.

Final Fantasy III —  September 25th for PSP
In Square Enix’s eternal quest to bring every FF game to the PSP, no matter how out-dated the hardware may seem to the rest of us, FFIII follows suit.

Grand Theft Auto III — September 25th for PSN
A part of me is still trying to comprehend how GTAIII wasn’t already on PSN. Does this mean that Vice City and San Andreas aren’t on there either? WHAT SORT OF WORLD ARE WE LIVING IN?!

LittleBigPlanet PS Vita — September 25th for PSVita
New rule: I’m not going to comment on any title that includes the name of the system it is being featured on within its title because you probably already know what to expect. Starting…Now.

One Piece: Pirate Warriors — September 25th for PS3
Apparently One Piece is a manga, rather than a swimsuit, as I first assumed. However, because that manga is not Ghost in the Shell, Akira, Battle Royale or something, you know, recognisable, I can’t say I care about this game. Probably doesn’t matter because word on the vine is that it’s not very good.

Pro Evolution Soccer 2013 — September 25th for PC, PS2, PS3, PSP, X360, Wii & 3DS
That’s right…they’re still making games for the PS2. Inorite?! I was surprised too.

Realms of Ancient War — September 25th for PS3
RAW (okay, that’s kinda cool) sounds pretty blase, so let’s take a look at one of Wizarbox’s previous titles, So Blonde.

Sunny Blonde is a 17-year-old teenager who has been spoiled by her rich parents. On a cruise with her parents who are celebrating their wedding anniversary, the ship is struck by lightning, and she is knocked overboard. She finds herself stranded on a beach of a remote “Forgotten Island” in the Caribbean Sea.

Holy crap, did they create the upcoming Tomb Raider 6 years before Crystal Dynamics?!

She is totally alone and worrying about her nails and messy make-up

…maybe not…

 The Testament of Sherlock Holmes — September 25th for PC, PSC, X360
Alright, that’s it. After seeing the Sherlock Holmes vs Jack the Ripper game cover all over the place for years, I’m officially hella curious as to what these games are. I’ll probably take a look at some point later this month/week/year/sometime in the future. I promise.

 Tokyo Jungle — September 25th for PSN
From what I understand Tokyo Jungle is set after humans have left planet Earth and follows the plight of the animals left to fend for themselves against each other in the streets of Tokyo. This sounds half bizarre, half awesome, all Japanese.

Warrior’s Lair — September 25th for PS3
If you didn’t already get your isometric RPG fix from Torchlight 2 last week, Sony got your back with…well, another isometric RPG…

World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria – September 25th for PC, Mac
I do not care for WoW but the CG trauker they released for MoP really had me curious as to how Blizzard would handle the opportunity to make their own WoW movie, because hey, I think it’d be pretty awesome.

Bad Piggies — September 27th for iOS, Mac, PC
Anybody here ever play Angry Birds? A couple of you, yeah? Here…have a sequel. Then tell me how you play this on a PC?

The DENPA Men: They Came By Wave — September 27th for 3DS
Uhhh… this is a role playing game in which you play as the DENPA men and is that supposed to mean anything to anybody? Oh, Japan…sometimes I just don’t know what to do with you!

Everyone Sing — September 27th for PS3, X360 and Wii
Until a karaoke game includes the following, I don’t care about karaoke games:

Catch you guys next week.

Borderlands 2 comes out this week! And all you Americans get it, like, half a week before I do. Which makes me angry. But not too angry because I am just stoked to get the chance to play a game I’ve actually been looking forward to. Mike is gonna be playing it as soon as and will get a review up sooner than later and we might start trying to figure out how ‘Second Opinions’ work with this game, but no promises. We should certainly have those up and running in the coming months, no matter what, because there is a whole mess of games on the way.

Speaking of games (and Borderlands!) lets see what else is on the horizon for the coming week.

Coming out this week:

Harley Pasternak’s Hollywood Workout — September 16th for X360, September 20th for Wii
If you want a workout guided by the Canadian *SENSATION* responsible for the figures of Hilary Duff, Katy Perry and…uh, Lady Gaga then look no further. I spent enough time with an old room-mates Nike training game for the Kinect to know, goddamn, I neither need nor want to spend any time with any more exercise games.

Borderlands 2 — September 18th for PC, PS3 and X360
Do I even need to explain why you should play Borderlands 2? I could point you to what I want out of the game, but otherwise things are looking good. Just look at this screenshot.

F1 2012 — September 18th for PC, PS3 and X360
I don’t know whether it’s got something to do with being in Britain, a place with less fondness for NASCAR than Formula One, but I still see an abundance of F1 2011 copies all over shelves, whenever I stop by anywhere that sells games at all. So, yeah. Now I get to look forward to seeing F1 2012 all over everywhere instead.

Hotel Transylvania  – September 18th for 3DS
Apparently Hotel Transylvania is a movie, starring Adam Sandler. Now I’m pretty into movies and whatnot and I have never even heard about this feature. Adam Sandler as Dracula sounds about as appealing as any of Sandlers recent roles recently, though, so not very.

Jet Set Radio — September 18th for PC, PSN and XBLA
Jet Set Radio is an action platformer that originally debuted on Dreamcast. You’ll probably remember it better by the name Jet Grind Radio, although I don’t think I ever even heard of it. So this is a HD remake. Apparently the original was pretty good, so take that for what it’s worth.

 Kinect Nat Geo TV – September 18th for X360
I’m sure this already came out, but looking back, I don’t seem to have written anything about it. So hey, if you dig on elephants and shit, National Geographic got your back with the most appropriate game for you since…well, Afrika for the PS3.

Kinect Sesame Street TV — September 18th for X360
It seems to me that this game is utterly moot, what with Double Fine having released what will likely prove to be an exceptional Sesame Street-Kinect based experience with Once Upon A Monster. Apparently, though, Sesame Street has a big Kinect initiative which means this is probably the second of a whole myriad of SS games coming along in the future.

Street Fighter: 25th Anniversary Collector’s Set — September 18th for PS3 and X360
I’m just gonna give you the hard info because that’s probably the most informative thing I can do, rather than crack some lame old joke about Street Fighter.

The Street Fighter: 25th Anniversary Collector’s Set includes Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix, Street Fighter III: Third Strike Online Edition, Street Fighter IV Arcade Edition and Street Fighter X Tekken. All costume DLC is included for Street Fighter IV along with all character and Swap Costume DLC for Street Fighter X Tekken. The set will also include an eleven disc soundtrack filled with Street Fighter music spanning the last twenty-five years. In addition, a two disc Blu-Ray set will feature a documentary covering the franchise, Street Fighter IV and Super Street Fighter IV anime films, all episodes of the Street Fighter animated series and Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie. A 64-page art book, eight inch light-up Ryu statue, full-size Ryu martial arts belt and certificate of authenticity are also included.

I legitimately kinda love the Jean Claude Van Damme Street Fighter movie. Legitimately.

La-Mulana — September 20th for Wii

La-Mulana is an Action Archaeological Ruins Exploration game.

What in the holy fuck does that mean? As Dr. Lemeza Kosugi you will fight monsters to get to the mystical city of La-Mulana and you know what? This just sounds bad. I don’t even want to know anything else, it just sounds bad.

Rayman: Jungle Run — September 20th for Android
Who loves Rayman? You love Rayman! Who loves Android? Fucking no-one, that’s who. Alright, I kid, I kid. But seriously, I couldn’t care less about an Android version of a great game, because I simply don’t have an Android.

Torchlight II — September 20th for PC
Torchlight II isn’t coming out. I know they say it’s coming out, but it isn’t. It can’t be. My universe implodes the moment this game finally comes out. So no, it’s not coming out. It’s especially not coming out the day Borderlands 2 comes out where I live, because, hell, that means I’m probably not gonna play it.

Anna — September 21st for Mac
So, this is a first person horror adventure that debuted on PC earlier this year and has very little profile as far as I can tell. But I’ve been looking into getting into horror games, so the PC version may end up making its way onto my personal wishlist. We’ll see.

So, to surmise: Borderlands, Borderlands, Borderlands. Any thoughts? Hit the comments, below.

Jesus, this week is quiet and I can’t say I mind, as I’m having an extremely busy day. So let’s just get straight into it.

Coming out this week:

Critter Crunch — September 11th for PC
Critter Crunch is an iOS game that has been ported to PC and will later be available on PS3. According the the iOS reviews, it’s pretty good. GREAT!

Double Dragon: Neon — September 11th for PSN, September 12th for XBLA
Another game in the utterly ‘meh’ beat ‘em up franchise that is still alive after 25 years. GREAT!…ish.

Finding Nemo: Escape to the Big Blue — September 11th for 3DS
C’mon, everybody loves Finding Nemo. I don’t even need to do any research for this one. GREAT!

NBA Baller Beats — September 11th for X360
It’s a rhythm/basketball game. So it’s a second tier mash up of a dead genre and a mass market Kinect game that…
Nobody cares. GREAT!

NHL 13 — September 11th for PS3 & X360
Hockey. GREAT!

Tekken Tag Tournament 2 — September 11th for PS3 & X360
I almost care about Tekken, in some alternate reality when I never stopped being 13 and Tekken 3 was still the greatest game of all time. Almost. GREAT!

Empire: Total War (Gold Edition) — September 13th for Mac
Something, something, Total War, something, Gold, something. GREAT!

Prince of Persia Classic — September 13th for Android
I’m sorry, I just don’t see the appeal of PoP classic for anybody to young to have played it ‘back in the day’. And for Android? Just…urgh.
But still, GREAT!

Kirby’s Dream Collection: Special Edition — September 16th for Wii
I’ve admitted before that I’ve never played a Zelda game. Is it reputation suicide to admit that I’ve never played a Kirby game either? You know what, just imagine a world where I’ve never heard of Nintendo. Because, honestly, that’s not far from the truth.

Super speedy, like I said. This should counteract the fan-gasm I have next week when Borderlands 2 is released. So, look forward to that.

Comments, below, all that jazz. Lates!