When DC Universe Online debuted last January, it became the first MMO available for the PlayStation 3. Sony Online Entertainment wants to celebrate the first anniversary of this hit game by providing a special mission and item in game today.

“We broke a lot of new ground with last year’s launch of DC Universe Online, both by successfully creating the first PS3™ MMO community and adding true action combat to the genre,” said Lorin Jameson, Executive Director of Development, Sony Online Entertainment. “The free-to-play transition at the end of last year is a proof point that our community is stronger and larger than ever. We are very proud of what we’ve accomplished thus far and look forward to continuously striving to improve the game.”

To celebrate the game’s one-year anniversary, players will receive a special one-of-a-kind One Year Anniversary Cape that features a number “1″ on the back. The cape will be granted to players through their mission journal on January 11. The character must exist on the 11^th to be eligible to receive the mission. However, players do not need to log in on the 11^th; as long as the character exists on the 11^th, players will receive the mission the next time they log in.

The game went free to play late last year and has been a hit among MMO fans and comic book fans a like. More on what the game has accomplished in it’s first year after the jump.

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This is it. It’s the big one! Right before the New Year, we posted our awards for the best of gaming in 2011. But there was one all important award that we needed some extra time to deliberate on… The Game of the Year.

In this episode, JC and WallE forgo the usual format of the Bitcast and engage in a conversation where they, along with some input from Flickcasters Matt Raub and Cortney Zamm, decide on what game earns the coveted title of Game of the Year.

And The Nominees Are:

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Call of Duty Elite is a service that allows the most hardcore Call of Duty players to lose themselves in some pretty advance stat tracking and multiplayer progression. Now those gamers have even less of a reason to spend any time away from their account with the launch of the iOS app for the service.

The new app will be free for all registered users, and is available on all iOS platforms today. An android version is going to be hitting soon as well.

Immerse yourself in Call of Duty® wherever you go with the Call of Duty® ELITE mobile app. Evaluate your multiplayer progress with in-depth stat analysis. Formulate new strategies based on your recent performance and remotely incorporate edits to your loadouts. Push your changes directly into Call of Duty®: Modern Warfare® 3 so you’re always ready to play.

Check out a list of features and some screen shots after the jump.

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As we have seen, some games go through extended development times and switch between studios to varying degrees of success. A poor example of this is 2011’s Duke Nukem Forever. Some games however find their strengths and weaknesses and adjust accordingly. One such game looks to be I Am Alive, currently under development from Ubisoft Shanghai.

Originally announced in 2008 under developer Darkworks, I Am Alive was announced to be a full retail release but has now been brought to a more manageable downloadable title.

I Am Alive takes place in a fictional city of Haventon one year after something referred only to as the Event, a cataclysmic occurrence that wipes out much of the world’s population. There is even a cloud of toxic gas surrounding much of the planet. The main character is on the search for supplies and other survivors while he tries to reunite with his wife and daughter.

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One thing we’ve learned is there are too many games and too little time to play them all. This also means there isn’t even enough time to give all of them awards, but we try our best. Today we take a look at both the most time consuming efforts of the past year as well as give some awards for games that deserve some notable mentions as well.

Game Most Likely to Consume Your Life: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Two Hundred and Fifty Hours. By most estimates, this is how long it’ll take an average player to explore MOST of the content of Skyrim. To give some perspective, if the average person works a 40 hour a week job, Skyrim would take six and a quarter full work weeks to complete. Now, we realize that most gamers work jobs outside of the gaming industry and cannot devote a full forty hours a week to a single game.

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Yesterday we took a look at Minecraft, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, Capcom, Dark Souls and Portal 2. Today, we have a whole second set of awards to be given out for the best (and worst) of 2011.

Game That Shouldn’t Have Taken Nearly As Long to Come Out: Duke Nukem Forever

What happened in the time span since Duke Nukem Forever began development?

The entire Presidential run of George W. Bush.

This writer’s entire high school and college career.

Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, Revenge of the Sith, and The Clone Wars were all released in theaters.

The XBox was released and ended its lifecycle.

Activision released 7 proper Call of Duty titles.

Lost.

A child born when development started would have grown to be a teenager.

The list goes on and on…

And the worst part is, after all that wait… Duke Nukem Forever wasn’t very good when it did finally come out. What was considered controversial when the game began production is pretty tame by comparison to what people are enjoying in gaming now and the humor comes off as sophomoric instead of clever.

While we can understand the desire to release a passion project to finally let it see the light of day, sometimes it is better to let it enjoy a quiet death with some dignity instead of coming out guns blazing as a failure.

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2011 was one heck of a year for gaming. Once again, the Call of Duty franchise set records for the largest entertainment launch in history. A game that was only in Beta was able to sell millions of copies and spawn an ungodly large community to the point they had a convention before the game was officially released. There were tons of critical darlings encouraging developers to rethink how they create games.
Take a look this week at the awards The Flickcast (along with The Bitcast team) are proud to present for gaming in 2011

Think Outside the Box Game: Portal 2

While many may argue that Minecraft may be the most deserving of this award, they need to remember one thing. In Minecraft, there are no rules. The expanses of the box are too extreme to find the outer boundaries of. Within Portal 2, players are asked to explore new viewpoints of physics, matter and… well, portals. The puzzles in Portal 2 completely overtake the complexity and creativity of the original, which in itself was groundbreaking. With additional toys at their disposal and the introduction of a cooperative mode, the team at Valve came up with a game that redefined both the puzzle solving and FPS genres all at once.

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The PS Vita is Sony’s latest attempt to conquer the handheld gaming market. The technology is impressive, but the marketplace has never been more crowded with the growth of phone and tablet gaming, and the of course Nintendo’s iron grip on portables. The Vita hit stores in Japan last week in advance of it’s early 2012 worldwide release and it made a very admirable showing.

Reuters is reporting that the first two days of the system’s launch saw 321,400 units sold. That number is smaller than the Nintendo 3DS’ initial launch of 371,00 units sold, but is impressive considering the context.

The 3Ds was launching a new technology attached to the incredible successful DS brand. The Vita is coming out after a history of sub par Sony portable devices, including the PSP Go which was a bomb. The sales numbers are very nice for Sony but they need to maintain sales over a few years before the new portable device can be called a win.

In hopes to maintain a strong open for the device Sony has a solid 24 game launch window lineup and will be pushing PS3 to PS Vita connection to make the device a regular part of Sony gamer’s experience.

The Vita will be hitting US shelves in February in Wifi and 3G/Wifi models.

JC and WallE are back with the 7th epic edition of the Bitcast. In the News of the Week, the two discuss the announcement of the PlayStation 3 Smash Brothers inspired brawler Title Fight and the characters that may be coming to it. They also talk about a recent study that links violent video games to slower brain activity. Finally, they look at how Angry Birds developer Rovio passed on a $2.25 billion dollar offer from social media games developer Zynga who incidentally lost almost a million players in their game Mafia Wars 2 in just one month.

In the second edition of The Long Grind featuring The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, JC discusses the story (spoiler free) and the open world adventuring aspects of the game.

In this week’s Topic of the Week, social media in gaming such as Facebook integration and community sites like Raptr are brought up. Finally, in Now Playing, JC gives some more insight into his longer than expected play sessions on Saints Row: The Third and WallE discusses his review of Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3.

Make sure to subscribe to The Flickcast iTunes feed to get each weekly episode of the Bitcast downloaded right to your iOS device.

First they are sour, then they are sweet. Capcom hopes that a downloadable game staring the little candy dudes ends up more like the latter. World Gone Sour is a new game that will take place in a human sized world, but from the perspective of the little sugary treats.

Game Informer is reporting that Capcom has the game in development.

“Sour Patch is the #1 all sour candy brand in the U.S. but there is so much more to these iconic characters than just their sour exteriors and sweet interiors,” says Sebastian Genesio, marketing director for Sour Patch. “Bringing our ‘lost kids’ to life in video game form will add a new dimension to these lovable snacks. We feel this video game will resonate strongly with our core audience of teens and young adults.”

“Sour Patch has brought its brand to life in a unique experience that only video games can deliver,” said Christian Svensson, senior vice president, planning & strategy, Capcom Entertainment, Inc. “Whether you’re a fan of Sour Patch Kids or fun and engaging gameplay, World Gone Sour has something for all gamers to enjoy.”

It is also being reported that the game will feature the new Method Man song, World Gone Sour (The Lost Kids) and narration by Creed Bratton, who, conveniently, plays Creed on The Office. Sounds like this game will have everything you could possibly want in a game based on candy.

World Gone Sour will be available this winter for 400 Microsoft Points or $4.99 on the PSN or PC.

Capcom are the kings of frenetic, carpel-tunnel inducing fighting games. They are also the kings of selling you those games multiple times. Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 is a super-sized revision of one of the best fighting games of the last few years. The original Marvel vs Capcom 3 came out earlier this year, but that proximity doesn’t do anything to lessen the impact of its brand new counterpart.

Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 brings a dozen new characters to the fun, as well as opening up several new levels to fight on and addresses a whole mess of balancing issues. The whole package is available for the lower price of forty bucks, and offers the most complete version of the game possible.

This sort of re-release might seem odd in the age of the DLC, but the additions to the game and the refinement of its engine are so robust that they needed to send the game back out as a new disc. Thankfully, Capcom had mercy on us by giving the game a budget rate, but the lowered retail price is only one of the game’s many high points. All twelve of the new characters offer some sort of exciting game play gimmick or interesting in-game look, with Rocket Raccoon being one of the most oddball and Hawkeye providing the most fun.

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Marvel vs Capcom 3 was a fantastic game, one of the best fighters of the current console generation. Now that the updated and expanded Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 has hit we have even more alternate color schemes and fantasy team match ups to play around with.

However, Capcom is not content with just letting you use different repaints to fulfill your dreams of seeing alternate versions of these characters duke it out. This week the fine folk at Capcom released images and release dates for a series of DLC costume packs that go beyond some simple color changes.

These costumes are full re-skins, giving you a chance to see fully rendered alternate versions of these characters. Instead of a simple blue and yellow Phoenix costume, for instance, we get a near exact replica of the classic Jim Lee Era Jean Grey to play with. We also can see versions of characters like the Weapon X Wolverine that is drastically different than his costumed counterpart.

Some of these packs have already been announced as pre-order bonuses from various game retailers, but many of them are being showcased here for the first time. Capcom is also very smartly making a value pack available for all 11 new costume packs as well as the 48 previous alternate costumes from the original Marvel vs Capcom 3 game.

Check out all 48 new costumes and more details on price and release dates after the jump.

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