Phil Villarreal

If you’ve been feasting on the free hacking, slashing and looting offered up by the ‘Diablo III‘ beta, get ready to go on a diet. The game’s free pre-release appetizer goes offline May 1, two weeks before it launches on PC.

Online betas are both brilliant marketing moves — players get a taste of

Good news for freeloaders: Xbox Live Gold, which costs $60 a year, will be free Thursday through Monday.

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Imagine you could step into a time machine and revisit all your favorite moments. Pretty cool so far, right? Only this time machine doesn’t let you walk around and enjoy yourself — it keeps you locked inside the clunky device, forced to peek out through a muddy, distorted window. When you try to relive your glory days, you end up screwing them up and ruining all your memories.

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Apple is a jealous and vengeful god. Not simply content with owning your life with the iPhone, iMac and iPad, it’s aiming to wrestle the Xbox controller out of your hands and punch your PS3 in the balls.

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Yesterday we told you that ‘Halo 4′ would be kicking down your door Nov. 6, and now we’re telling you that it’s bringing some friends along — late-night talk show host Conan O’Brien and ever-present sidekick Andy Richter. The pairing of pasty, non-threatening comedians and a hardcore, distant future-set fragfest doesn’t quite calculate, but whatever.

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Turns out that not-so-bold prediction we made yesterday that the ‘Super Mario Bros. 4′ would be headed to Nintendo’s new Wii U console worked out better than that bet we had on Syracuse to win the NCAA tournament. Mario mastermind Shigeru Miyamoto confirmed that Nintendo would bring a new Wii U Mario

Before that pushy World Wildlife Fund got all cranky and lawyered the WWF initials away from pro wrestling, we dug the quarter-chomping arcade game ‘WWF WrestleFest.’ If the ‘Street Fighter II’  cabinet was occupied, ‘WrestleFest’ was our go-to-game.

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We’re not sure whether the developers of ‘Kinect Star Wars’ actively hate George Lucas’s brainchild and sought to mock it mercilessly, or just don’t understand the appeal of lightsabers and Jedi knights and just threw something together in a crude attempt at sympathizing with the franchise’s fanatics. Whatever the case, ‘Kinect Star Wars’ is the most laughable addition to the family since the 1978 ‘Star Wars Holiday Special.’

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If you’re going to re-release what, at its core, is basically the same game every year and expect fans to keep forking over their $60 again and again, you’d better add something worthwhile.

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Released nearly two years ago in Japan and last year in Europe, you’d expect Xenoblade Chronicles to look at least somewhat dated.

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