It's shooter week on the PlayStation Network, as new content for both Killzone 3 and Bulletstorm is available to download today.

Leading the charge this week is Steel Rain multiplayer add-on content for Killzone 3. The content will sell for $5, but PlayStation Plus subscribers can download it for free until May 10.

As for the maps within the content, Steel Rain is composed of two new environments based on Killzone 3's single-player campaign. Junkyard is a guerrilla warfare map that has players duking it out in a drenched garbage processing factory. The other map, Stahl Arms, is a warzone map set in one of the biggest weapon plants on Helghan.

The other new batch of shooter content out now is the Gun Sonata ($7) add-on for People Can Fly's Bulletstorm. The content includes three new maps for the game's Anarchy multiplayer mode: the murky Sewers of Stygia, the ruins of Hotel Elysium, and the more expansive Villa. Additionally, the new DLC adds two new environments for the game's score-attack Echo mode: Crash Site and Guns of Stygia.

It's raining steel in Killzone 3 this week.

Further, gamers will earn additional ways to kill with skill with the Gun Sonata content. Two new leash enhancements are bundled with the DLC: the Flamingo and the Pulp.

Switching to full games, Sony added three new titles to its PlayStation 3 download space today, the first of which is Dungeon Hunter: Alliance ($13). An action role-playing game set inside the fictional world of Gothicus, the game lets up to four players fight together against bands of creatures.

Also out now for the PS3 is Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes ($15). A puzzle game with role-playing elements, the title's main story lets gamers play as any of five young heroes, each with unique campaigns. Gamers will work through the turn-based game by battling foes, and can fight either online or off.

The last game out for the PS3 this week is Assassin's Creed ($20), the first in Ubisoft's praised stealth action franchise.

Switching to the PSP storefront, Sony added just one new game to the spot today, Patapon 3. The game follows the rhythmic pursuits of a belligerent tribal warband intent on slaying beasts as mythical as themselves, using a variety of primitive weapons. Gameplay is heavily influenced by the rhythm genre, in that actions in the game--such as advancing, retreating, blocking, and attacking--are accomplished by hitting an appropriate combination of buttons in time with the in-game soundtrack.

Also now available on the PSN are the Red Dead Redemption preorder bonuses. Deadly Assassin Outfit, Golden Guns Weapon Pack, and War Horse are now available for 80 Microsoft points, or $1 apiece.

A full list of the week's deals and new PlayStation Store content, including themes, wallpapers, demos, discounts, and add-on content, is available on the PlayStation Blog.

Microsoft's Kinect sensor has thus far proven to be a boon for US retailers, judging by the consistent growth in accessory sales each month. That's not stopping GameStop from adding a further incentive to the Xbox 360's camera-based motion-sensing controller this week, though.

Today, Namco Bandai announced that gamers who pick up Kinect at GameStop during the week of April 10-16 will also receive a free copy of its minigame collection Body and Brain Collection. The makeshift hardware bundle comes as part of GameStop's Power Saver Sale, which is in effect the entire month of April.

Dr. Ryuta Kawashima has the brain-training market cornered.

Released to lukewarm reviews in February, Body and Brain Connection includes 20 minigames designed to test a player's math skills, memory, reflexes, and other capabilities. For example, one such game has the player point out matching pairs from a field of shapes, while another asks players to use their arms to sort toy cars on the move, rerouting them onto color-coded tracks.

While the game isn't part of Nintendo's Brain Age franchise (despite the association with the bespectacled face of that brand, Japanese neuroscientist Dr. Ryuta Kawashima), it will still assign players a brain age and allow them to track their progress. The game also includes a multiplayer mode allowing up to four players to compete for the lowest brain age or best performance on a specific minigame.

Nintendo updated its virtual storefront today with a string of new content ranging from a tattoo game on DSiWare to a cartoon minigame bird title for WiiWare.

Leading the pack this week is Art of Ink (800 DSi points, or $8) on DSiWare. From Sabarasa, the game puts players into the shoes of a tattoo artist who is tasked with designing desirable ink patterns for many clients. Additionally, when players accrue enough fame, they will be challenged by other artists and must defeat them to become the next "tattoo master."

Also out now on DSiWare is Slingo Quest (800 DSi points, or $8). The game combines two famed games: bingo and slots, forming an all-new puzzle game. The title sports 50 levels, multiple game variations, and a number of power-ups.

Gamers can now practice their tattoo skills on the go.

The last DSiWare title out this week is Escape Trick: The Secret of Rock City Prison (500 DSi points, or $5). The game stars protagonist Roy, a man wrongly sent to jail, and it tasks players with breaking out of the prison and unraveling the mystery of Roy's life.

Switching to WiiWare, Nintendo added one new game and a demo to the download spot this week. The new game out now is Play With Birds (500 Wii points, or $5), which is a minigame-themed adventure that has players following a city bird from birth to adulthood.

The new demo out now on WiIWare is for Fast Draw Showdown. From Digital Leisure, the game has players un-holstering their Wii remotes as quickly and accurately as possible to remain standing following shoot-outs.

Two days after BioWare announced a fourth Mass Effect novel, it has unveiled another transmedia spin-off of its successful sci-fi role-playing game series. Today, the Canadian developer, its owner Electronic Arts, and Japanese studio FUNimation announced that a Mass Effect anime feature film is in the works. International production company T.O Entertainment will co-produce the project, which will arrive on home video and digital distribution channels in summer 2012.

The deal marks the second collaboration between EA, FUNimation, and T.O Entertainment. Last June, the trio announced a deal to make an anime based on another BioWare franchise, the fantasy RPG series Dragon Age. That project, executive-produced by BioWare creative director Mike Laidlaw and producer Mark Darrah, is due out on home video sometime later this year.

The Mass Effect series is getting the anime treatment.

Details were scant on the Mass Effect anime, other than that it will be executive-produced by Casey Hudson, executive producer of the Mass Effect series. Also executive-producing will be FUNimation president and CEO Gen Fukunaga, FUNimation director of original entertainment Chris Moujaes, and T.O Entertainment CEOs Takeichi Honda and Yui Shibata.

Today's announcement offered little in the way of plot information besides saying that the Mass Effect anime will "tell the tale of an epic science fiction adventure set in a vast universe filled with dangerous alien life and mysterious, uncharted planets."

The original Mass Effect saw series hero Commander Shepard engaged in a convoluted battle with agents of the Reapers, a race of sentient starships with mind-control powers. Mass Effect 2 had Shepard nearly die and then be revived by Cerberus, a shadowy pro-human organization, so he could battle a sinister alien race called the Collectors. Mass Effect 3, due out this holiday season, will have Shepard come to the rescue of Earth, which is beset by a catastrophic Reaper invasion.

Mass Effect 3 is slated to arrive this coming holiday season. Today, book publisher Del Rey announced that the game will have some company in the Mass Effect universe when it launches, thanks to a new spin-off novel due out this fall.

Titled Mass Effect: Deception, the new book will be the fourth novel based on the sci-fi role-playing game series, which debuted in 2007 and continued with a sequel in early 2010. It is preceded by the books Revelation, Ascension, and Retribution, all of which were written by Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic scenario scribe Drew Karpyshyn.

With Karpyshyn now having relocated to Austin to help craft plotlines for BioWare's massively multiplayer game Star Wars: The Old Republic, writing duties are being transferred to William C. Dietz. Dietz is the author of more than 30 novels, including the game tie-ins Halo: The Flood, Starcraft II: Heaven's Devils, Hitman: Enemy Within, and Resistance: The Gathering Storm.

The Mass Effect novel series continues with Mass Effect: Deception.

As for Mass Effect: Deception's plot, it centers on the autistic biotic Gillian Grayson who was featured in Mass Effect: Ascension. After being subjected to dangerous experimentation as part of the Alliance's Ascension Project, she was spirited away to the Quarian Migrant fleet to hide her from the shadowy Cerberus organization, which viewed her as a weapon. Now a young woman, she is beginning to master her powers--but falls in with a group of biotic radicals "who believe their powers make them superior to ordinary humans."

The past several months have seen actor Charlie Sheen become the focus of a maelstrom of media coverage. Following a health scare, the film and TV star engaged in a series of media interviews during which he espoused a series of bizarre catchphrases that soon found themselves in the popular lexicon. (The totality of those comments led to him being fired from the popular sitcom Two and a Half Men, which airs on GameSpot parent company CBS.)

Now, the Associated Press reports that Sheen has hired an outside company to trademark many of those phrases for use in a variety of fields--including games. According to the news service, Hyro-gliff, a company associated with the actor, filed a flurry of trademark applications between March 19 and 22 for 22 terms. These include "Adonis DNA," "Duh, Winning," "Vatican Assassin," "Tiger Blood," and "Rock Star from Mars."

Vatican Assassin: The Game?

The trademarks were filed for a variety of fields, including drinks, candy, women's underwear, gambling machines, and, yes, video games. Exactly what form a Charlie Sheen-based game would take--or whether one will ever be made--has yet to be determined. The actor is currently on a speaking tour of the US and Canada, and he will appear in Cleveland, Ohio this evening.

Fans of Metal Gear Solid's latest portable entry--Peace Walker--will soon be able to show their affection for the title by wearing clothes from the game.

Konami has announced a men's "complete clothing collection" based on the attire of Peace Walker's characters. The clothing set will include coats, sweatshirts, pants, T-shirts, and hats. Konami also says additional apparel will become available quarterly and around "special events" scattered throughout the year.

The clothing line was created via a partnership between Konami and Musterbrand LLC, a design group whose focus is bringing digital properties out of the screen and into the real world.

According to Konami, the clothing line will become available in the United States and Canada beginning April 11. However, the publisher did not note where the attire will be available. A likely shopping spot, though, would seem to be Konami's online store, KonamiStyle.

For more on the title in question, check out GameSpot's review of Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker.

Considering the multimillion-unit success of Dragon Quest IX for the DS, Square Enix has been surprisingly quiet about its follow-up, Dragon Quest X. Beyond announcing the game at the tail end of 2008, Square Enix has offered little indication as to what gamers can expect from the title, aside from its being in development for the Wii.

While it doesn't appear that Square Enix's radio silence on the subject will end anytime soon, the publisher has at least said that it plans on opening up about the game this year. Speaking to Go Nintendo, Dragon Quest creator Yuji Horii said that he expects to have an announcement for the game ready to go by the end of the year.

Horii couldn't say much other than that the game will resemble DQVIII.

"All we can say is that development is going well and we're on the last parts of the game," Horii said. "We can't really share much else at this point, but by the end of this year we should be able to announce something regarding it."

Horii also offered a tease on what gamers can expect from the title, saying that it is being built in the same vein as Dragon Quest VIII.

"Something else we hear is that players want a new Dragon Quest that follows the same system of Dragon Quest VIII, so that's something else we're taking into consideration while in development for a Dragon Quest on Wii," he said.

DQVIII was notable for being the first installment in the franchise released for the PlayStation 2, as well as the first to be rendered in full 3D. The plot saw gamers facing off against an evil wizard, who stole a magic scepter and cursed an entire castle. As the lone unaffected resident of the castle, players set out with a portly companion (the king) and the princess to track the wizard down, reclaim the scepter, and break the curse.

For more on the highly regard DQVIII, check out GameSpot's review.

It's a bustling week on the PlayStation Network as new content, including the latest add-on pack for Mass Effect 2, is now available alongside a slew of other PS3 and PSP games.

Leading the pack this week is the Arrival ($7) content for BioWare's critically lauded sci-fi role-playing game. Arrival sees Commander Shepard investigating clues to an impending Reaper invasion on the edge of the galaxy. The downloadable content will also see the return of actor Lance Henriksen (Aliens, Stone Cold) lending his voice to Admiral Hackett.

The latest add-on for Mass Effect 2 has arrived.

Being released on the PS3 today after more than a year as a PC exclusive is Sony Online Entertainment's Free Realms (free). Aimed at the family-friendly set, the game is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game where combat is optional. It includes an assortment of quests, minigames, themed events, and social-networking features, including the ability to upload in-game videos to YouTube.

Also out now for the PS3 is Rush 'N Attack: Ex Patriot ($10). In the game, players will control a lone soldier sent into Russia to find a missing ally, equipped with nothing more than a knife. As in the original, different weapons can be picked up from dispatched enemies, but the game will also include a stealth mechanic to mix up the old formula.

Gamers looking to grab a title from yesteryear can download Sonic the Hedgehog ($5) today for the PS3. The original Sonic game has players zooming through colorful zones and rescuing animal friends from the nefarious Dr. Eggman.

Staying with the time-traveling trend, Sony has added the second episode in the Back to the Future: The Game series to the storefront. Titled Get Tannen (free with season pass), this latest chapter in the saga sees players controlling Marty McFly and tasks them with stopping Kid Tannen from meddling with McFly's family and forever changing the future.

Other new games out for the PS3 are futuristic side-scrolling action game Moon Diver ($15), Disney's racing game Split/Second ($30), and musical block puzzle game Chime Super Deluxe ($10).

Switching to the PSP download space, Sony added four new games to the spot this week, the first of which is WWE All Stars ($30). The arcade-style wrestling game has players fighting in between the ropes as any of many classic fighters, including Hulk Hogan and "Macho Man" Randy Savage.

Also out now for the PSP is The 3rd Birthday ($30). The game stars Parasite Eve franchise protagonist Aya Brea, who once again is put in the position of saving humankind from a monstrous biological menace. Set in Manhattan in 2012, the game sees the city beset by the monstrous creatures known as the Twisted, and Aya is once again tasked with saving the day.

The last two games out for the PSP now are Don Bluth's arcade game Dragon's Lair ($8) and the role-playing game Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky ($30).

A full list of the week's deals and new PlayStation Store content, including themes, wallpapers, demos, discounts, and add-on content, is available on the PlayStation Blog.