Chestnuts roasting on an open fire…Jack Frost nipping at your nose…etc., etc. Yes, it’s (almost) that time of year again, and to celebrate we have some festive treats guaranteed to bring a smile to your PSP‘s (or PSPgo‘s) big shiny face.

First up is our Festive Fifty celebration, which you may have already seen. During the year, the Digital Comics catalogue has grown to epic proportions: it now boasts over 2,700 titles, from 20 different publishers, with 23 great value bundles, and almost 50 FREE comics. To help you pick the best, most popular comics, we’ve listed our top 25 best sellers of the year, featuring blockbuster names like Marvel’s Civil War series, Hulk, God of War and Spidey. We also wanted to highlight our own personal favourites and some recent releases too. Our list of 25 “Boredom Busters” contains such classics as Deadpool, Gaiman’s epic Sandman, and the soon-to-be-everywhere Locke & Key, along with some cult classics deserving of your attention. Check out the full lists here.

Let’s see what’s new in the Digital Comics store this week.

• Insomnia’s Cancertown was one of the highlights of our early offerings – a great series which steadily grew a loyal cult following during its time on the store. Now, writer Cy Dethan is back with the superlative The Indifference Engine through Markosia.
• Every great action hero got started somewhere: Batman Began. Bond had his Casino Royale. And for John McClane, more than a decade before the first Die Hard movie, he’s just another rookie cop. BOOM! Studios present Die Hard: Year One – 8 issues are now available to read. Yippee Ki Yay!
• Not one but two of DC’s Ex-Machina specials are released today. At long last, the origin of Jack Pherson, the Great Machine’s mysterious archenemy, is finally revealed in this perfect introduction for readers new to the world of Ex Machina.
• Witness the birth of The Four – Reed Richards, Johnny Storm, Susan Storm & Ben Grim – with the start of Marvel’s 2003 epic Ultimate Fantastic Four. Not to be outdone, the Marvel dream team of Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch unleash the red-hot 2002 series of The Ultimates this week.

Here’s the full list:

• 2000AD Prog #1710 2000AD
• Bone #9 Cartoon Books
• Die Hard: Year One #1-#8 BOOM! Studios
• Ex Machina #22 DC Comics
• Ex Machina Special #1 & #2 DC Comics
• Fables #37 DC Comics
• The Flash: Rebirth #3 DC Comics
• Green Lantern #19 DC Comics
• Green Lantern Corps Vol.1 #1 DC Comics
• The Indifference Engine #1 Markosia
• Iron Man: Legacy of Doom (2008) #1-#4 Marvel
• JLA #25 & #26 DC Comics
• Kill Shakespeare #7 IDW
• N-Guard #3 Markosia
• Planetary #21 DC Comics
• The Punisher (2001) #5-#8 Marvel
• Ratchet & Clank #3 DC Comics
• Reya #5 Markosia
• Sandman #14 DC Comics
• Superman/Batman #41 DC Comics
• Supernatural: Origins #3 DC Comics
• Ultimate Fantastic Four (2003) #1 Marvel
• Ultimates (2002) #1 Marvel
• Wolverine Origins (2006) #7-#10 Marvel
• Wonder Woman Vol.3 #13 DC Comics
• Y: The Last Man #20 DC Comics

Cataclysm may be in full swing, but if you can bear to tear yourself away World of Warcraft: Curse of the Worgen should help ease the pain. If you haven’t already done so, check out our exclusive creator Q&A here. As ever, check out www.playstationcomics.com to view the whole catalogue, for regional pricing, exclusive blog posts and to join the Digital Comics forum.

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It’s the penultimate ‘Heads-Up’date of the year! Is everyone feeling fiercely festive?

This week you can complete your Prince of Persia HD trilogy with Warrior Within and The Two Thrones and Sackboy’s Prehistoric Moves comes to the main Store (no, it really does this time – last week was a practice).

Prinny 2 and Bakugan on PSP, plus five new minis land today and also worth a mention is the Disney PSone Classics – they’ve all been dropped in price, to the tune of one Euro (or equivalent) each.

We also have tons of DLC this week for a wide range of titles, including another free update for Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood (multiplayer this time) and more DLC for PSN favourites like Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light, Joe Danger and Mushroom Wars.

You can now also get your hands on the Borderlands Extravasplosion Add-on Pack, which aside from being a candidate for the best named DLC in all of human history provides you with all four of the fantastic Borderlands expansions at a budget price. So if you’ve been denying yourself a trip to Zombie Island, now’s the time to consider packing your bags and strapping on a bite-proof helmet.

I’ll be around in the comments a bit later so if I don’t respond right away, rest assured that I’ll get to it before the end of the day.

Catch you later.
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Now featuring over 2600 titles from the world’s biggest and best comic publishers, the Digital Comics catalogue continues to expand a rate matched only by the heinous plans of your average, everyday supervillain as they strive for world domination.

To celebrate the festive season, we’ve picked 50 titles – the 25 best-selling titles of the year and 25 of our favourite “Boredom Busters”, all of which are guaranteed to warm the cockles of even the most maniacal sociopath’s heart.

Read on to see the list of our top 25 best sellers, in alphabetical order:
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Hello, James again. Lead Designer on Eat Them! And I want to talk to you about Power Bars. I know, interesting stuff! It’s all rock and roll here at top flight game developers FluffyLogic.

One of the aims of the game is to maintain the pace throughout. We want the game to be pick-up-and-play – so session times will be short but the nature of the game will encourage repeat play. We are aiming for an old-school arcade feel and we want people to sneak in one more game before school, or when coming back from the pub, or between courses at a swanky dinner party! A game that is played in five minute chunks needs to be pacey and efficient – there’s no time for standing around when you should be beating the daylights out of a skyscraper or chomping through a bus load of tourists.

The other thing that’s important is eating people; if monsters aren’t eating, the game doesn’t live up to its name and whoever came up with the title it is going to go away disappointed.

So this brings us to power bars. In the E3 version of the game there are separate health and power bars – it’s a fairly typical set-up: the health bar is depleted whenever the monster is attacked, and the power bar drops whenever the monsters uses any of its weapons. Eating people increased both. So far so good…

We are very lucky to have a relationship with Sony which allows us to make changes to the design if we believe them to be beneficial to the game. It also means that when we receive feedback from Sony, we trust their opinions, and are happy to act on them. On this occasion we got some feedback which basically said “Why not combine the health and power bars?”. And you know what? We did.

Our man from Sony was right, the system we had in place had an unintended consequence: because a monster’s power decreased independently of health, players would end up running away from a fight, even if their health was high, because their weapons were out of power. They would then hide in a corner eating passers by until they could attack again. This isn’t, and never will be, the behaviour of a proper monster…

Now the two are combined, there is more emphasis on eating people to keep the monster alive, and it is rarely beneficial for the player simply to stand around. The power loss caused by using weapons is replaced with a small but consistent power use throughout gameplay, so the player is not dissauded from wading in all guns blazing.

We’re pleased with the new system, but it’s still early days – and it will undergo further refinements, I am sure, before you good people get to see it. But I hope I’ve given a little insight into the thought that goes into something as seemingly inconsequential as a power bar.

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Hi again, its already time for the next treats to be added to Plus for you!

Today we will be adding a couple of little extras that we hope you will enjoy.

You may have heard about a game called DC Universe Online? Well we have worked hard to make sure that you guys get exclusive access to the Beta of this huge MMO Action title. All Plus members will be included and the download is being added to the Plus section of PlayStation Store as we speak – yes, that’s right now.

Due to the scale of the game, this Beta Trial will require approximately 15GB of free Hard Disk Drive (HDD) space, and can take an average of 3-4 hours to download, or potentially longer depending on your broadband internet connection. It will definitely be worth it though!

We are also giving you guys a great PSP game Add-on for free. Little Big Planet PSP Turbo! Pack, will be yours to download and keep forever today. This pack contains loads of extras for LBP PSP.

And finally, try the game Prototype before you buy as it will be in the Plus section from today as a full game trial.

Will be back on the 22nd with even more treats for you.

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