This new trailer shows what happens when Joel and Ellie stumble across some desperate survivors…

For the fourth year running, Nissan and Sony have teamed up to bring the GT Academy to fans of the Gran Turismo series. Players can download a free GT Academy 2012 demo from the PlayStation Store and race to be in the chance of winning a spot in the competition slots and perhaps even win the chance to participate in the Dubai 24 hours race.

You can enter the competition from May the 1st until the 24th of June, and you can enter by downloading the demo and topping the leaderboard. The competitiois set in 8 rounds with each round challenging players in different ways. Overall, there will be 40 events over 8 weeks.

Previous winners include GT Academy 2008 winner Lucas Ordoñez, who placed second in the 2011 Le Mans 24 Hour race, GT Academy 2010 winner Jordan Tresson, who is now racing in the FIA World Endurance Championship and Le Mans 24 Hours in the Signatech Nissan LMP2 car, and GT Academy 2010 winner Jann Mardenborough, who is racing a Nissan GT-R Nismo GT3 in the Blancpain Endurance Series.

So far, over 400,000 people have participated in GT Academy 2012, with over 27,640,000 km driven collectively. Statistics and leaderboards can be found at the GT Academy website. This competition is exclusive to European PlayStation 3 owners and participants must have a PlayStation Network account to enter.

You can also recieve updates from the GT Academy Twitter and Facebook profiles.

This article is sponsored.

Note: Matt also published a unique ModView episode a few weeks ago in which he takes a look at ways to improve your performance on low-end PCs. You can see that here.

Some of these mods are incredibly useful, some just help aesthetics, and some are just for fun.

Fall of the Space Core, Vol. 1 by Aperture Laboritories

Available on: Steam Workshop

This mod adds the Space Core from Portal 2, voiced by Nolan North, into Skyrim. You can find him in a burnt-down house near Whiterun and you can pick him up to put him into the Misc. area in your inventory. He will talk, saying a bunch of lines.

He can be taken to the Midden under the College of Winterhold and placed onto the Atronach forge with an iron helmet and refined moonstone in the box to create a new piece of armour; the Dovahcore helmet.

Finally, this mod also adds wheatley from Portal 2, who can be seen floating around on the Skills menu.

Spend Dragon Souls for Perks by DarkSeraphim85

Available on: Steam Workshop & Skyrim Nexus

This mod adds 3 Dragon Stones near Riverwood which can be used to spend your dragon souls on perks. You can only buy perks which you legitimately have access to and the price of the perk depends on the level you would need to get it with a perk point. For example, a level 50 perk would cost 5 souls while a level 30 perk would cost 3.

This is a great way to get rid of your excess dragon souls, and it does not need any script extenders or special treatment, unlike most of the similar mods.

House Map Markers by Smakit

Available on: Steam Workshop & Skyrim Nexus

Sometimes the placement of houses could put you off living there, as some take much longer to get to than others due to their distance away from the town gates. This mod adds map merkers for every purchasable house in Skyrim, abolishing that problem. Using one of teh map markers will drop you right in front of the door.

Alchemy Ingredient Storage by Manilla Turtle

Available on: Steam Workshop & Skyrim Nexus

There are a few alchemy puches found on top of alchemy tables within the purchasable houses in Skyrim. These can be an ideal place to store your alchemy ingredients as they’re right on top of the alchemy table, but storing your items can take a while. This mod adds a new menu which comes up once you have activated the pouch, asking you how many ingredients you want to store.

Using this menu you can store all of your alchemy ingredients, half of them, or choose to keep one or three of each ingredient. Once this menu has been closed, the storage menu will come up.

Arrowsmith – Simple Fetching by Samutz

Available on: Steam Workshop & Skyrim Nexus

This mod adds the ability to create arrows through smelting. You can make sets of 50 arrows using firewood and various other materials. Arrows can be made only by people with the appropriate perks, so you can’t make steel arrows until you have the perk which allows you to craft with steel.

RNG (Dynamic) Guards by Lawren

Available on: Steam Workshop & Skyrim Nexus

This mod tries to make the guards found throughout Skyrim have more of an individual personality. Usually, every guard has the same armour and same helmet and they just look like clones, but this mod gives them different helmets and unique armour sets to make them stand out.

Better Quest Objectives by Whickus

Available on: Steam Workshop & Skyrim Nexus

Some quest descriptions are just too vague, and this mod tries to change that by making them more descriptive. Where a vanilla quest objective might ask you to meet someone in some place, this mod will change that to specify who that is and where there place is. This is especially helpful if you don’t want to constantly rely on objective markers to know what to do.

The announcement was teased by the Elder Scrolls Twitter feed yesterday, but all that has been revealed today was the name and a promotional image. Dawnguard will be further detailed at E3 in June.

On Bethesda’s blog post about it, they say it is coming to Xbox 360 in the Summer, but the PS3 and PC versions of Skyrim aren’t mentioned. It was announced before that Skyrim DLC will be a timed exclusive on Xbox 360, similar to the DLC for Fallout 3.

In interviews before and after Skyrims release, Todd Howard (Bethesda Game Studios’ game director) mentioned that he wanted Skyrim DLC to be more like TES IV: Oblivion’s ‘Shivering Isles’ pack, which added a whole new realm and storyline to the game, in contrast tothe DLC for Fallout 3, which mainly added short new experiences.

According to recent rumours, the DLC may include snow elves and crossbows, but this has not yet been confirmed.

The Walking Dead

The first episode, ‘A New Day’ from The Walking Dead from Telltale Games came to PSN last Wednesday (25th April). The game is based on Robert Kirkman’s award winning comic-book series and the TV show of the same name.

The game series consists of 5 episodes, each which can be bought from the PlayStation Store individually at £3.99. The episodes will be released at around a month intervals.

As Jake says from the PlayStation.Blog, “Not only is The Walking Dead game darker and more violent than anything the studio has done before, but it also provides a very different gameplay experience compared to our previous games.

“One major way that the game differs from previous Telltale offerings is that your decisions, through action and dialog that you choose, will have huge repercussions on how you experience the story of the game…”

“You’ll play as Lee Everett, who has been sentenced to life in prison for killing a man who was “romantically” involved with his wife. Whether Lee killed in cold blood or perhaps in self-defense is something we’ll let you decide.”

“Unlike any other previous Telltale game, The Walking Dead tailors the story based on the decisions that you make. Your decisions or actions might have an effect in the episode you’re playing or might affect the entire season. You could answer a question in a certain way and have a character become suspicious of your motives, or you could be forced to choose who to save when two people are in mortal peril but only one can be yanked back from the zombie horde.

Your decisions will stay with you throughout the series, and their repercussions could mean that you and a friend have a very different game experience. Writing for a game with content that “branches” in this way certainly has its challenges. Instead of a normal linear script, we have to take into account each possible branch and how it affects the game you’ll play. It’ll be fun to backtrack when playing to see what would happen if you’d made a different decision and our save system supports that with our rewind feature.

Beyond the huge impact of choice and the tailored experience, we’re giving players full control of Lee to explore the environment and think their way through both action sequences and survival-oriented puzzle arcs that are signature to a Telltale gaming experience. Unlike Monkey Island style games, we won’t be ‘using the pie on the gerbil to open the trapdoor’ or anything remotely comedic or illogical; instead, we’ve implemented much more serious concepts that are both logical and completely in-keeping with figuring out how to survive in a zombie apocalypse.”

See more on this here.

Resistance: Burning Skies

Resistance: Burning Skies has revealed a Survival Mode for the PS Vita. The game consists of 8 players. 6 start out as humans and 2 play as the Chimera. When a Chimera kills a human, that human respawns as a Chimera, gradually decreasing the humans until there is only one human left. The last human standing is the winner. This is a tense game mode of hide-and-seek whilst battling off the increasing numbers of angry Chimera.

Resistance: Burning Skies is also offering a pre-order bonus, if you pre-order you’ll get a jump start straight to level five in multiplayer. This also allows you to unlock your first grenade upgrade (the Hedgehog, which can be used as an area of effect weapon of destruction or placed like a landmine for unsuspecting victims to stumble upon) as well as your first weapon upgrade.

Players who pre-order also get three character avatars based on Burning Skies’ lead characters Riley, Ellie and a Chimera, along with a custom PS Vita lock screen theme.

Skype on PS Vita

Skype is coming to the PlayStation Vita! You can see more on that here.

Gravity Rush

Gravity Rush are offering a free, day-one DLC when you pre-order the game for PS Vita. The DLC, called Military Mission, gives you a unique military costume for Kat and some new characters as well as two additional side missions with brand-new content and two new challenge missions, which will be revealed after release.

The content for side mission 1, called Game Rules, after completion of Episode 17 of the main story, the new “Game Rules” side mission will be available. “Kat has been asked by Commander Yuri to train as a military officer. As she is training with her rival, Seawasp, a message comes in saying that the Nevy have appeared.”

After this mission is completed, KAT’s unique military costume is now unlocked.

The content for side mission 2, called VisionaryCcourage, is available after completing the Game Rules side mission. “D’nerica has ordered for the capture of a massive amount of nevies. En route, a disaster strikes and Hekseville is swarmed. Amidst the chaos that ensues, Kat has to decide which is more important – her mission, or her friends.”

Gravity Rush is due to be released on 13th June 2012.

Dirt: Showdown

A Dirt: Showdown Q & A took place asking Mike Chapman, Senior Designer on the game, some questions about Codemasters next installment of Dirt.

Some of the questions included:

• Will the Outbreak game mode be in Dirt Showdown?

• Will there be any mechanisms in online to protect from excessive and pointless ramming?

Click here for the full range of questions and answers!

Sony have announcedthe game through GT TV, where the first gameplay was shown.Since then, they have released a trailer and some screenshots for the game.

PlayStation All-Stars: Battle Royale will throw a roster of PlayStation characters, including Kratos, Sweet Tooth and Parappa the Rapper, into a 4-player brawler very similar to Super Smash Bros.

Gameplay footage is included in the trailer below.

The trailer, called Donya Fortress, shows gameplay for the first of Battlefield 3′s 3 themed expansion packs, Close Quarters.

It features intense close combat around the cellars, rooms and balconies of a fortress/villa, destroying large amounts of decorative architecture and books.

The Close Quarters map pack will be released in June being 1 week earlier for PS3.

Dirt 3 kept the fun of it’s previous title, whilst adding more of the rallying content that fans had called for. What does Dirt: Showdown offer that the previous titles didn’t?

Dirt: Showdown is not about racing, in any serious way at least. The game calls on players to have as much vehicular mayhem fun as possible, and then some more.

Game Type

The preview of the game consisted of a game type called ‘Knock Out’. Here players were given a compact square map with a raised platform in the middle. Players get points for bashing, ramming, and generally trying to destroy other cars on the platform. Players do not get points for hitting others that are off the platform. This makes for tense action as all the players jostle for position on the top platform, whilst the points rack up for the most aggressive and tactical drivers.

In the bottom right hand corner of the screen is a wheel-shaped HUD that shows both ‘Boost’ and ‘Health’ levels. The HUD changes depending on the game-type you are playing, but at all times the HUD remains unobtrusive and sleek, allowing you to concentrate on the action.

Graphics

At first glance Dirt: Showdown looks visually the same as Dirt 3, but as you play the difference becomes clear. Sparks fly when players smash into eachother and the cars are much more destructible. Body panels fall off and lay strewn around the course, leaving a picture of devastation at the end of the game. It was highly satisfying to see this level of destructibility on the cars, making them feel more like a car with individual components and panels rather than just a rectangular block used for hitting other rectangular blocks.

Codemasters also take full advantage of the graphics capabilities with the environments. Bright stadium lights shimmer off the cars and onto the camera, fireworks spread sparkling beads of colourful light throughout the night sky and bursts of fire shoot out from the ground as you drive up a ramp or pull off a jump. All these things make Dirt: Showdown visually spectacular, a true feast for the eyes.

Presentation

The menus on Dirt: Showdown follow on from the tried and tested look of Dirt 3. It is sleek and simple, allowing you to easily navigate the cars and tracks on the game. The menus are also very visually useful, showing large images of the cars next to their names, making for very trouble-free navigation around the menus.

One aspect of the game that does unfortunately stay with us from Dirt 3 is the jarring American accents that seem to irritate pretty much everyone. The annoying voices of encouragement chip in at every possible opportunity, reminding me how great the race was, or how I shouldn’t be upset and try again next time.

Although these voices of reason and wisdom are an attempt to engage us further in the Dirt: Showdown experience, they just left me with the urge to press the ‘mute’ button.

Overall

The experience of Dirt: Showdown was enjoyable, but those fans who called for more rallying content for Dirt 3 should probably avoid this game. Dirt: Showdown is a fun spin-off from Dirt 3, in no way intended to be serious, and in no way a successor to Dirt 3.

Dirt: Showdown is definitely fun and will provide some of the most enjoyable driving experiences a game can offer but am concerned as to how long this game will be satisfying. I rest assured for now though, as Showdown offers to bring some unique and entertaining vehicular mayhem when it’s released on May 24th in mainland Europe. The UK will receive it on the 25th May With the United States release date being the 29th.

Dirt: Showdown’s demo will be available on May 1st everywhere featuring both multiplayer and singleplayer game modes.

Skype will be available as an app on PlayStation Vita’s ‘Media & Apps Social’ category on the PlayStation store as of tomorrow (25th April 2012).

The app is available for both Wi-Fi and 3G versions of the Vita and includes free Skype-to-Skype voice calling, as well as high quality video calling that takes advantage of PS Vita’s front and rear cameras.

The Skype app also features a background mode, allowing players to use Skype while using other apps or playing games. (However this does not work for games that disable network features, such as Uncharted Golden Abyss).

The app also allows users to, with a small amount of Skype credit, make low-cost calls to landlines and mobile’s straight from the PS Vita.

Any Skype-certified heatset can also be used with the Vita.

The trailer also shows off the alien technology and weapons that ‘The Prophet’ will be able to use, as well as confirming that the game will arrive in 2013.

Take a look at the trailer here.