Shadowrun Returns finished its Kickstarter funding round with a total of $1,895,772 in donations to the cause. Announced earlier this month, the project was hoping to raise $400,000 to bring a Shadowrun sequel to PC, iOS and Android as a "graphically rich 2D turn-based single player game."

After hitting some funding milestones, developer Harebrained Schemes and Shadowrun creator Jordan Weisman will include Mac and Linux support, and dole out some physical rewards for contributions. Next, Harebrained Schemes has to make the game and meet some high expectations.

Uncharted series lead Richard Lemarchand has apparently had enough with crafting an Indiana Jones-esque protagonist, and is now taking steps toward becoming that hero himself. Speaking with Gamasutra, Lemarchand said he's leaving his current job (of eight years) at Naughty Dog – creators of Crash Bandicoot, Uncharted, and The Last of Us – in order to take on new challenges at the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California.

"In other words, I'll be surrounded by awesome people, talking craft and philosophy, and building strange new things," Lemarchand said of his new role as professor at the Interactive Media Division at UC. "It seems like a natural transition point," he added. "I was involved with the development of the Uncharted series not quite from the beginning, but almost ... and even though the Uncharted series isn't intended to be viewed as a trilogy, maybe there's something about the number three that felt ... there is a certain amount of completeness for me."

But when will the next transition happen, from daring professor to daring professor slash extreme archaeologist? Sooner than we imagined, it seems. Lemarchand's first order of business is a three-month backpacking excursion that'll take him around the globe. After that, he'll begin work on a "series of experiment games," aimed at exploring "procedural narrative," among other things. After that, we're hoping he takes on the Nazis in their own zeppelin.

It wouldn't be a Halo launch without a tremendous media campaign, and Halo 4 looks to be no different. The weeks leading up to the Master Chief's return this November will be filled with a new web series entitled "Forward Unto Dawn," according to Variety. Representing Microsoft's "largest investment" in live-action ever, the series will be shown on Machinima and Halo Waypoint.

Details around the series still lie dormant – perhaps buried in a Forerunner facility – with Microsoft aiming to shed more light on the project at the San Diego Comic-Con this July. Using our own pervasive powers of prognostication, we're going to predict that Spartans figure into the series somehow.

Update: Microsoft has passed along an image to promote the series and, sure enough, it looks like the Chief will be making an appearance. Check out the full image in the gallery below.

In space, barring any obstructions, there's nothing to stop momentum. Rovio has announced that Angry Birds Space has been downloaded over 50 million times. In Rovio's own words, Angry Birds Space is now "the fastest growing mobile game yet" and breaks the company's records.

Rovio thanked its fans for the game's success, hinting that "something even bigger is on its way." Even bigger than a Mighty Eagle?

Wondering what that just-announced multiplayer focus will look like in God of War: Ascension? The game's creative lead, Todd Papy, is currently setting up shop with the US PlayStation Blog's Jeff Rubenstein and will be broadcasting footage of the game across the interwebs any minute now.

What's that, you wanna ask questions too? Thanks to the power of the internet, you can do just that via Twitter with Sony's synergistic hashtag, "#GodofWarAscension."

But don't ask if Kratos is still gonna be super upset in this one. We've got that news for you right here: he totally will be.

Super Monday Night Combat developer Uber Entertainment has been working long hours the past couple of weeks, ever since the premature distribution of its free-to-play MOBA. With a small break in the madness, we finally got Super MNC Executive Producer and Art Director Chandana "Eka" Ekanayake to answer a few of our questions about how the early launch happened, and what's next for the game.

"The reason for the early launch was because we messed up on beta invites to a large pool of original Monday Night Combat players. To test out our server infrastructure, we wanted to send out a massive invite wave to players of MNC on PC. Players received a notice saying that they were accepted into the beta but actually weren't," Eka told Joystiq over the weekend. "So, instead of making players of our first game happy, we managed to deliver something that wasn't there and made them feel like they were lead on. We tried fixing it, but it just lead to more confusion, so working with Valve we decided to set the game open. It wasn't an accidental leak by any means but it was a result of us trying to make things right with our player base."

Eka didn't share raw numbers on how many players have signed up for Super MNC since launch, but says the studio is "happy" with the turnout, especially since they didn't have any lead time to market the game. He feels many folks don't realize the game is out ... or that it's free. Asked if any of the marketing plans for the game were disrupted by the early launch, he matter-of-factly stated, "Yes, all of them."

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A familiar face appears on the screen, moments before a demo for God of War: Ascension begins. Zoomed in, the angry mug resembles angry anti-hero Kratos, but as the camera pans away it becomes obvious: this is someone completely different.

Suddenly, a Cyclops bursts through a wooden door near the new character and the demo begins. The new character, decked out in armor inspired by the Greek God Poseidon, moves with the swiftness of Kratos. His sword pierces the monster's skin. Suddenly, another character leaps into frame, attacking the Cyclops with a giant hammer. The pair of soldiers mercilessly cut the Cyclops down, working together to mount the creature and slice its belly apart. As blood and guts slide out of the monster's midsection, the surrounding area explodes into a set of orbs. Multiplayer has come to God of War.

Without a moment of hesitation, the pair walk through the newly opened structure before them, coming to the mouth of a large canyon. In the distance, a giant one-eyed cyclops based on Polyphemus, son of Poseidon and Thoosa, engages a large group of soldiers fierce battle. But it isn't a battle between A.I.; Ascension's multiplayer mode is grander than we first thought.

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Prototype 2 launched on Tuesday in the UK (instead of a Friday, per usual) last week and leapt to the top of the charts. Despite the strong premiere, Chart-Track notes the sequel couldn't match the first week sales success of the original game. Chart-Track doesn't share raw sales numbers, but it did point out that the game had stronger sales than previous chart-toppers Kinect Star Wars and The Witcher 2.

Speaking of Witcher 2, which held the crown last week, it slipped five spots into sixth place. EA continues to have a winning cluster with FIFA Street, FIFA 12 and Mass Effect 3 holding steady close to the top of the charts, with the group maintaining spots two through four, respectively.

Prototype 2 was the only new game to break the top 40 last week. Tap your tentacle past the break to check out the UK top ten.

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Bust out your bright purple tennis racket and get weird with Nintendo on May 20 when the new "Midnight Purple" 3DS launches alongside Mario Tennis Open. Nintendo announced the new 3DS color scheme this morning after retailer listings this past weekend outed the new color.

Like the quartet of 3DS flavors already available for purchase, Midnight Purple (or "Big Purp," as we're calling it) will retail for $170 when it arrives next month. Will there be a Grimace-tied promotion at McDonald's alongside the launch? We can only dream.

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It's funny how Nintendo getting on-board with digital distribution is such big news. Granted, Nintendo may seem a bit late to the party when compared with Microsoft and Sony, but it's not like they were exactly pioneers of the medium either.

We like to think that buying things digitally and either downloading or streaming them to our consoles is a modern invention, that it somehow classifies this era as futuristic or technologically advanced, but the truth is that digital distribution and stream-based gaming has been around since the dawn of time.

Well, very nearly, at any rate. In 1981, the PlayCable system was introduced for the Intellivision, allowing cable television subscribers to download games (up to four whole kilobytes!) into a special cartridge. Two years later, the CVC GameLine service was launched for the Atari 2600, allowing subscribers to download games via 1200 baud modem into a massive, silver "Master Module" cartridge.

If either of these services sound familiar, it's because the same basic premise was used just over 10 years later by the Sega Channel in 1994. So comparatively, when Microsoft launched the original Xbox Live Arcade in 2004, it was already 20 or so years behind the times.

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What's your game called and what's it about?

Our game is called Vessel. It's about a man with the power to create life, and all the consequences that ensue. As far as gameplay, it's a liquid-physics puzzle platformer.

How would you describe the style of Vessel – steampunk? – and why did you decide to use that template?

It's a mechanical world. Steampunk is the closest pop culture reference, but we don't really call it that because steampunk brings to mind so many other connotations that aren't accurate for our game. We wanted to create a world where the machinery of the world was very exposed, meaning you could see the inner workings of all the machines, how things tick, grind and whir. The goal was to put the Fluros in this nice little mid-point, a contrast between Arkwright, the main character, and the machines of the world. Fluros are the bridge between them.

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Chinese design house/ridiculously detailed toy company ThreeA Toys had many different prototype products on display during its ReVenture event in Hong Kong this weekend, but the ones we're most interested in are the astonishingly accurate reproductions of Portal 2's Altus and P-Body and Metal Gear Solid 2's Metal Gear RAY.

All three statues are prototypes and as such there's no information regarding availability, pricing, how articulated they might be or what they'll even look like once they've been painted. It's also difficult to tell whether this RAY model is the manned version created by the Marines, or the unmanned mass-produced model designed by the Patriots. Either way, we desperately want these things adorning our various fireplace mantels as soon as humanly possible. Check out high-resolution shots of all three statues in the gallery below.

The team at Platinum Games, developer of online cross-franchise beat 'em up Anarchy Reigns, has a pretty sweet deal. Those lucky dogs get to sit around and play the games they're making all under the guise of "work." It's almost as awesome as playing and writing about video games other people make for a living. Almost.

The above video shows off 11 minutes of Platinum Games playing Anarchy Reigns, complete with audio reactions and some sweet specialized moves.

Borderlands is getting the Barbie treatment with its own line of action figures from NECA, starting with Claptrap and the Psycho Bandit. The Borderlands Series 1 figurines are painted in an homage to the game's cel-shaded cartoon style, and while we wonder how the Psycho Bandit's pants can possibly stay on his hips even with that belt, the simple, chunky designs have grown on us.

Claptrap stands 4.5 inches and looks especially canon, featuring an extendable antenna (making him 6 inches), a wheel with shocks, hinged shoulder and eye flaps, ball-jointed shoulders and hinged, swiveling elbows, along with a display stand. The Psycho Bandit stands 7 inches and includes a buzz axe accessory, ball-jointed head, shoulders, elbows, thighs, feet and wrists, a hinged torso, swivel waist and hinged knees.

Check out a few photos here and look out for Series 1 figurines to be available in May, with Series 2 to debut in August with Zero the Assassin and Salvador the Gunzerker.

Gamestop's plodding metamorphosis from pseudo-pawn shop to actual pawn shop continues, as the massive retailer/reseller is poised to begin accepting four specific Samsung-made, Android-powered devices as trade-ins, according to a report from Gadget Experts.

In addition to the iPhones and iPads already accepted for trade-in, "select stores" will begin accepting the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, Samsung Nexus S and Samsung Infuse sometime this summer, with a nation-wide roll out expected before the 2012 holiday season, Gadget Experts writes. None of this news is particularly surprising, considering that smartphones and tablets continue to gain ground as portable gaming devices. Also, Android devices are a thing that Gamestop isn't selling you that they totally could be, which obviously must be corrected.

The first Diablo 3 TV commercial has come. It brought with it Tyrael, Leah Cain and the Lord of Terror himself. Like the spot says, Evil is back. It comes for your money.

The German publisher of Awesomenauts, dtp entertainment, filed for insolvency today, potentially stopping the game's XBLA and PSN launch on May 2. Developer Ronimo Games isn't sure what dtp's financial problems mean for Awesomenauts, but both companies are attempting to work out a resolution that gets the game published, IGN reports.

"Insolvency" is the European equivalent of bankruptcy and dtp now faces liquidating or reorganizing its assets, IGN writes. We've contacted Ronimo for comment about dtp's insolvency and the status of Awesomenauts.

Quantum Conundrum's Airtight Games is used to handling inter-dimensional scenarios, but now it's going for the most egregious combination yet, mixing virtual reality with real reality. Quantum Conundrum and iam8bit are teaming up for a mysterious and seemingly slightly dangerous production this May, asking "hardcore fans" to sign up to be "transported to another dimension, all in the name of science. Seriously, we're not messing around."

Potential participants are asked to be at least 18 years old and be available May 11 and 12 in the Los Angeles area. Fifty people will be chosen, based on the form requirements of "Why should you win?" and, apparently, how hearty your bone structure appears in a photo you send in. Any die-hard Quantum Conundrum or iam8bit fans, or those with superior cheekbones, can fill out the entry form right here.