Welcome to the Black List, our regular retrospective on the week in games.

On Monday, we were horrified to discover that the psycho from IO Interactive’s Kane & Lynch was known to his special lady as ‘Lynchie’.

On Tuesday, we ran a sceptical eye over the Sodium One launch trailer and concluded that the PlayStation Home exclusive had a tough road ahead of it.

On Wednesday, we covered the announcement of the first wave of Heavy Rain DLC from Quantic Dream.

On Thursday, we bemoaned the fact that Activision had revived the phrase ‘high octane’ in announcing a reboot of its True Crime series.

On Friday, we wished you a Merry Christmas.

Visit the site on Monday for Part 1 of The Games of 2010.

Thanks for reading.

Erin Marcon – Editor

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Recent editions of The Black List

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There's no Christmas without Lee Majors.

The Black Panel team wishes our readers and listeners a very merry Christmas. Your patronage of our little endeavour is greatly appreciated and we can’t thank you enough for the invaluable feedback during our first three months. Daily updates will continue throughout the holiday period and the podcast will return on Monday 11 January 2010. Best Wishes!

Activision has revealed that United Front Games is hard at work on a reboot of the True Crime series. Once again you’ll be playing an undercover cop, this time tasked with infiltrating the Hong Kong Triads. United Front is promising a blend of martial arts, driving, gunplay and the now mandatory free running. A cursory glance at the announcement trailer confirms the studio’s commitment to over the top action. The press release actually includes the phrase “high octane” just in case you were in any doubt.

The first two instalments in the True Crime franchise, Streets of LA and New York City, were developed by Luxoflux. With the open world action genre then in its infancy, the series was compared, endlessly and unfavourably, with Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto series. The new title, known simply as True Crime, will be the first to appear on current generation platforms.

True Crime is due for release in Spring 2010. Look for it on PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

“You’re right, Mavis. That’s the little tramp from the girlie mag.”

Sony and Quantic Dream have announced DLC plans for Heavy Rain, the forthcoming investigative thriller exclusive to PlayStation 3. The additional content will be presented as a series of stand alone episodes, each featuring a key character from the retail release. The first instalment, clumsily titled Heavy Rain: Chronicle One – The Taxidermist, occurs prior to the events of the original game. You’ll be stepping into the shoes of journalist Madison Paige as she hunts down a serial killer.

A voucher for The Taxidermist will be included in the Heavy Rain Collector’s Edition. This and all future instalments will also be available for paid download via the PlayStation Store.

Quantic Dream CEO David Cage recently told Destructoid that Heavy Rain was not a video game in the traditional sense, describing it instead as an interactive “journey”. Well, grand pretentions notwithstanding, it seems the journey in question may be a surreptitious shuffle to the local newsagency to pick up a skin mag. As reported by Kotaku, Madison Paige will “appear” topless in a forthcoming edition of Playboy.

Heavy Rain is due for release in February 2010.