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Spring's in full swing, just ask any allergy sufferer. May releases on Sony's platforms are nothing to sneeze at, though. The PS3 has a pair of exclusives that have been getting good buzz so far. 3D Dot Game Heroes brings extremely Zelda-like 8-bit action to the platform with a sense of humor and nostalgia on the 11th. Read more »

A few old favorites land on the PS3 this month, starting off with the delayed Episodes from Liberty City on April 13th, a reboot of a last-gen crimefighting-man-with-dog franchise with Dead To Rights: Retribution on the 27th (IGN), and the souped up Super Street Fighter IV, also on the 27th. Read more »

I know you're going to be bored, PS3 owners, with MAG out now, White Knight Chronicles coming in February along with Heavy Rain and the likes of God of War III, Final Fantasy XIII, and Yakuza 3 in March. You were really hungry for something more, right? How about the digital release and in-store Blu-ray version of GTA Episodes From Liberty City featuring the two formerly Xbox 360-exclusive add-on adventures for Grand Theft Auto IV? Those will apparently be hitting retail and the PlayStation Store on March 30th.

I'm happy to see them show up and I'm definitely going to be picking up a disc copy for two reasons. One, I'm pretty short on hard drive space on my PS3 and two, it's guaranteed to be discounted at some point at retail. Once again, I'm looking to save a few bucks. It'll be nice to see Yakuza 3 get compared to it if it makes its March release date.

Full press release after the jump. Read more »

Looks like the impending release of the Xbox 360-exclusive DLC for Grand Theft Auto IV is going to be sweeter than expected for some gamers. It will come with a free week of online multiplayer on Xbox Live from February 17th through the 22nd. This is a good ploy to boost early sales which, for something as big of a seller as GTA IV has been, is probably not all that necessary. It also reminds gamers like me who play online with a PS3 that some poor folks out there have to pay a fee to play their games online.

And it's not like this is a hurdle for any 360 owner reading this blog. Except maybe those poor folks whose parents thought the $199 Xbox Live Arcade machine was a good value for little Timmy and have since realized how much more they have to buy to get online and get full value from Microsoft's machine. The other two machines this time around have no such issues.

This console lock-in doesn't make me wish the GTA IV DLC was coming to the PS3 any less, mind you. This is one of my favorite PS3 games of all time thanks to my already very strong tilt towards the franchise from countless hours spent in its three PS2 iterations. Critics these days are annoying me with their plaintive whining that the game didn't deserve a perfect 10, but seriously, would a 9.5 rating make it any less of a great game? I think not.

The mobile phone in Grand Theft Auto IV is a well-implemented communications tool. It ties the story together, lets Niko talk to other characters, and gets text messages to advance the story and perform all sorts of side missions. I only wish that Rockstar had gone the extra mile and tried to sell me a more useful phone as DLC. They could even have called it a BitterSweet after the in-game advertised smartphone Blackberry clone of the same type. As a big fan of the game now playing it through a second time to earn Trophies, I'd have paid $5, maybe even $10 for a phone that did some or all of the following: Read more »