Weekly Recap April 21st: Wii U Proves Its Power, God Of War Ascension, Crysis 3

April is starting to wind down to a close and we have some amazing news to share with readers, including confirmation that the Wii U is a heck of a lot more powerful than most people originally thought, thanks to official confirmation from a developer working on one of the most graphically high-end games ever released. Sony's latest God of War game gets leaked and it's called Ascension, and EA lets loose additional details for Crysis 3, along with some brand new images of the playing field. These stories and a heck of a lot more are waiting for you in this April 21st, 2012 edition of the Gaming Blend Weekly Recap.

Sunday

Space Quest Creators Reunite For Sci-Fi Space Adventure Game

Star Wars The Old Republic Struck By Rakghoul Plague A new event has just started for BioWare's MMO, Star Wars The Old Republic.

Mass Effect 3 True Ending DLC Was Never Supposed To Be Free? Be the judge and judge for yourself. Judge well, though. And judge correctly. You don't want to be a douchey judge or anything.

Valve Job Listings Admit Hardware Plans A new listing confirms that Valve is working on some brand spanking new hardware.

Shadowrun Returns Reaches $1 Million Score another win for the gaming community. Nice job guys.

Crysis 3 First Game Image Leaked? It's kind of fuzzy and badly lit but it's an in-game image nonetheless.

Assetto Corsa Screenshots Feature Lotus 49 A classic roadster makes an appearance in the upcoming, Italian-based racing sim, Assetto Corsa.

Project CARS Screenshots Are Explode Worthy They really, really are. Check e'm out for yourselves and see.

EA Updates Origin Account Policy, You Can Now Access Your Games While Banned Score one for banned people using Origin...you no longer have to shake your fist angrily at the heavens and curse the many names of EA's digital distribution service over denying you access to the games you bought and paid for.

Monday

3DS Helps You Tour Louvre You're now able to visit places you thought you could never visit. Check it out after the jump.

PSN To Become Less Free? It's entirely possible given Sony's financial troubles.

Torchlight 2 Papillon Is Fiercest Of All Pets It's a real angry S.O.B. Check out the screenshots to see this fierce little -- eh, I mean big -- guy in action.

EA, Games Workshop Resolve C&C Tiberium Alliances Tank Issue The legal issues we all thought would happen come to a complete halt.

Autodesk 3DS Max 2013 Gets Mixamo Mo-Cap Store Drag-and-drop motion capture animations easily and conveniently with the new in-engine store browser.

Miyamoto Teases Link To The Past, F-Zero The godfather of video games lets a few hints drop about some future titles.

Barry Sanders Joins RG3, NCAA Football 13 Cover A nice throwback to a football legend.

Namco Bandai Takes Top Spot In March Thanks To One Piece Namco pulls out a surprising lead over top competitors over in Japan.

Microsoft To Go First With Their E3, 2012 Press Conference They'll be kicking butt and taking names before Sony or Nintendo at this year's E3.

Nicalis Says Wii U Is Nintendo's Most Powerful Console Someone who doesn't make very powerful games says Nintendo's latest is their most powerful. So...yeah.

Crysis 3 Returns To New York, First Screenshots Released Check out the very first look at Crysis 3 with brand new screens.

Tuesday

EA Kinda denies Lay-Off Rumors After rumors surfaced that EA would be laying off up to 10% of their workforce, EA quickly came to their own defense saying the rumors were kinda not true but only a little bit. But mostly not.

Analyst: Modern Warfare 3 Sales Down Because of Wii, PC Gamers Look to your non-console gamers as the reason MW3 didn't sell more.

Gaming Screen Cleaner for iPads, PCs, Tablets Now Available From Schatzii Clean your gear in style.

Wasteland 2 Earns $2.9 Million Through Kickstarter Now this will be interesting to see how the game turns out.

Max Payne 3 Comics Explore Max's Violent Past You can also get some insight into his budding gut, too.

EA To Do More Hiring Than Firing by End Of This Year The company wants to grow, expand and venture out into bigger and better things by hiring more people not firing them.

Diablo 3 Beta Ending May 1st Better get in quick before it officially ends.

Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition Not Coming To Wii U If you were hoping this classic RPG would make an appearance on Nintendo's next console, think again.

GameIndustry Defends Used Games From The Hubris Of Publishers Score one win for consumers, yeah!

Wednesday

FireFall Staged Content Concept Could Be An MMO Killer A brand new concept for the way FireFall works could mark the end of the copy-cat MMOs .

Shadowrun Returns Not Coming To Wii U, Xbox 360 or PS3 The developers acknowledge that the RPG is made mostly for the PC platform, not consoles.

Xbox Live Monetization For 2012 Will not Include Free-To-Play Microtransactions If you were hoping Microsoft would switch, think again.

Retailer Mistakenly Lists Pre-Orders For Dead Space 3, NFS Most Wanted 2 You have got to love numbskull retailers...they really make it easier for us to do our jobs.

Call of Duty Black Ops 2 Announcement Coming May 2nd Activision's not-so-best kept secret could be announced at the top of May.

THQ Q4 Performance Expected To Hit $170 Million Thanks To Saints Row The company isn't bleeding out quite as badly as some of the news leads us to believe.

Diablo 3 Starter Edition Leaked, Beta Servers Go Offline A massive leak causes Blizzard to reassess their priorities over Diablo 3's beta.

DarkSiders 2 Release Date Pushed Back To August THQ delays DarkSiders 2 to ensure that it's all about the quality.

Thursday

Top 5 Tips For KickStarter Success From The Man, Tim Schafer Some real bright info on becoming a success on KickStarter thanks to tips from Tim Schafer.

Analyst Says The Old Republic Subscription Numbers May Drop Even More It's not looking good based on preliminary estimates.

Age of Wushu Character Creation Video Shows You How To Make A Kung-Fu Master The character creation is a lot more detailed than you might have been expecting.

Dungeon Defenders Map Contest Offers Up To $1,000 For Player Made Maps Design a map and win some cash. It's really that simple.

Orion Dino Beatdown Set May 4th Release ViDoc Overviews Free Title Updates Check out some dino beat downs in the latest ViDoc for the game.

Soul Captor Announced, Allows Players To Capture Hundreds Of Souls It's an MMO where "capturing them all" becomes a necessity.

Ghost Recon Future Soldier Beta Now Live For PS3, Xbox 360 Grab a beta key right now, but hurry!

Bethesda: Prey 2 Is Not Cancelled The game is still on track, sort of...but it's hit a few snags no doubt.

DiRT Showdown Release Date Announced, Demo Coming Next Week The latest racer from Codemasters is on its way with a brand new release date.

Total War Battles Shogun Arrives For iOS The popular RTS makes it to the mobile device.

Friday

Killer Gaming Talks Killing Lag For Gamers Who Play Online Lag is no longer an issue for gamers who no longer want to deal with lag, thanks to Killer Gaming.

God of War Ascension Trailer Box Art Leaked Here it is, Sony's latest God of War game for the PS3.

Sony Trolls Patent For Game Conventions? That's sort of what it looks like and the details are inside.

Leaked Halo 4 Screenshots Unveil Artwork, Character Designs, Armor Brand new info on the upcoming FPS from Microsoft and 343 Industries.

Gabe Newell: I Don'T Think Origin Is Doing Anything Super-Well Not-so-nice words for the digital distribution service from EA.

Binding of Isaac: Wrath of Lamb Expansion Arriving In Late May Some new content is on the way for the spooky, old-school indie game.

Publisher Entitlement Ignored Over Consumer Entitlement In Gaming Media Why is it so important to bash the people who make this industry go around?

Brink Has Sold More Than 2.5 Million Units Even though people thought it was kind of fail, turns out Brink actually sold more than anyone thought.

Risen 2 Dark Waters Console Versions Receives Lengthy Delay A slight delay for the pirate-based expansion action-RPG on the consoles. Find out what went wrong and how the devs plan to make it right.

Prey 2 Studio Stopped Development In November Not only that, but everything got all screwed up over pay-grades. Find out exactly how the breakdown went down after the jump.

Saturday

Coin 'N Carry Announced For People Who Enjoy Looting And Selling Stuff

Valve Didn't Meet With Apple The air gets clear and Valve makes it known that they did not meet with Apple.

343's Sparkast Explains The Lack of Firefight in Halo 4 Firefight is replaced with Spartan Ops, get a brief glimpse of how it works over at Co-Optimus.

Starbreeze Working on P13 For XBLA After wrapping up work on Syndicate Starbreeze gets back to basics on an indie title.

Official Trophy List For Mass Effect 3 Is Revealed Want to know what you can earn trophies from and what activities or actions need to be completed to achieve the trophies? Find out in the complete Trophy Listing.

Crysis 3 Gameplay To Follow Original's Direction If you enjoyed the open-world dynamics of the first Crysis then you'll probably feel right at home in the latest game in the series, due out next year.

Aliens Colonial Marines Concept Arts Shows New Xenomorph Check out concept art for a brand new alien type in the upcoming FPS.

Super Mario Bros 2 Coming To 3DS This Summer, First Screenshots Unveiled Nintendo has a brand new game in the works for the 3DS to keep you guys busy while you're playing on the go.

That wraps up this jam-packed, rocket-busting edition of the Gaming Blend Weekly Recap. If you're still in the mood for more media content then don't hesitate to check out the brand new cinematic intro trailer for the upcoming Torchlight 2 below. Enjoy.

Will Usher

Staff Writer at CinemaBlend.