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Why do zombies eat brains? There's usually perfectly available, good meat around, so what's with the brain-cravings? It's not like they do anything special with them. If they saved them for some kind of a stew or possibly pulled a Sylar, then you could understand it, but this willy-nilly shambling towards grey matter? Weird. Plus, do they have some sort of brain detector built-in? They always seem to know exactly which way to go.

Whoops, pardon our tangent. You want to get right to the swag, don't you? We're giving away nine copies of Halfbrick's brand new Age of Zombies, the PSP minis game that combines cute and cuddly with brain-hungry and undead. Seriously, these little zombies are adorable, and they'll look super keen on your PSP or your PS3. Since we can't explain why zombies crave brains, all you have to do is follow the rules below and tell us what the perfect side dish would be.

• Leave a comment telling us what the perfect side dish would be for a serving of brains.
• You must be 18 years or older and a resident of the US or Canada (excluding Quebec -- it has to do with Pierre Duchesne and he knows why).
• Limit 1 entry per person per day.
• This entry period ends at 11:31AM ET on Monday, March 8.
• At that time, we'll randomly select nine winners to receive a code good for one copy of Age of Zombies for PSP or PS3 (ARV: $4.99).
• For a list of complete rules, click here.

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What is Joyswag? Since we don't keep the games and merchandise we receive for review or promotional purposes, it becomes "Joyswag," which is passed along to our readers. Please note that Joyswag may be in "used" condition. For more info on our policy, click here.

Time Magazine once described Modern Warfare 2 as having "something intelligent to say about contemporary military conflicts." Which is why we haven't seen the addition of the popular Call of Duty staple, zombies -- it would ruin the incredible realism established by Infinity Ward's latest! Of course. Thankfully, Robert Bowling confirmed to IGN that there are no plans for Nazis, zombies, or Nazi zombies, in "any piece of Modern Warfare 2 downloadable content."

Thank goodness! We certainly wouldn't want to misrepresent the realities of modern warfare with something as ludicrous as that, right?

You know how you always wonder for that split second what it would be like to murder the paperboy when he rides by on his bike? What? His undeveloped, childish arm can never get the damn paper on your porch! Well, according to figures from the Left 4 Dead Blog, you've killed him. A whole bunch.

Or how about the in-laws? Oh man, you murdered them cold-blooded in Left 4 Dead 2. Basically, if every person on the planet was a zombie in the game, you've killed them -- 4.26 times. That would mean you've killed them, resurrected them, killed them again -- ah, you get it.

Another interesting figure: if the average height of a zombie is six feet tall, you stacked enough undead corpses end-to-end to circle the globe 1,322 times. You know how that's in italics? That's because it's crazy. In short: you are really good at killing zombies. Hey, don't feel bad for so much genocide! That's how it goes in the zombie apocalypse.

Things are going to look pretty different in the world of Battlefield Heroes during the month of February. Soldiers from both factions will soon find themselves embroiled in the "Vampires vs. Werewolves" event, which allows players to purchase costumes based on the two monstrous archetypes. Unfortunately, there's no room for crossovers -- Nationalists are strictly Team Edward, and Loyalists are strictly Team Jacob, and oh man we can't believe we just said that.

In addition to the costumes, both factions will unlock "claw swipe" attacks, and three of the game's maps will be given a new nighttime aesthetic. Check out this battle for Bella's affection cryptozoological dominance in the trailer above.

If you prefer your zombie-slaying iPhone Apps to be a bit more botanical in nature, you're going to have to hold out for a little longer than you may have anticipated. A recent PopCap Tweet explained that the initial "late January" launch window of Plants vs. Zombies for the iPhone is no longer accurate. "The game has been further delayed, but we are *confident* it will launch in mid Feb," PopCap explained.

This isn't great news for fans of the pseudo-tower defense game -- however, the use of asterisks in the message above makes us certain that PopCap is telling the truth this time. See, asterisks are like little truth symbols. Check this out: "Man, Beaches is my *favorite* movie of all time." Totally, totally true.

[Via ShackNews]

Are you on the fence about whether or not you should pick up the cumbersomely titled Call of Duty: World at War: Zombies for your Apple-branded mobile device? First of all, fence straddling is dangerous. Get down from there! Also, there's no reason to be all wishy-washy anymore, as a free "Lite" version of the game has recently become available on the App Store.

Zombies Lite allows players to mow down three rounds of oncoming Nazombies in a single-player match, or two waves of the undead in a multiplayer match before coming to an abrupt end. That may come off as a little unsatisfying, but hey -- 'tis better to have murdered zombies and lost than to have never murdered zombies at all.

Nine out of ten film experts agree that Zombieland was the best movie to come out last year, and expect it to make a strong showing at the Academy Awards. It should already be a no-brainer that you're going to purchase the film when it's released next Tuesday, Feb. 2 -- however, the Blu-ray version of Zombieland includes an unadvertised bonus that might influence you to drop the extra cash for the HD iteration.

According to High Def Digest, if you pop the Zombieland Blu-ray into your PS3, you'll have the option to download a dynamic theme based on the film through the XMB's Game tab. The theme turns the browser's icons red, and changes the background into a rotating gallery of promotional art for the movie. It sounds like a really neat feature -- one that might influence us to purchase more Blu-rays should it become more popular.

Question: What's the only thing scarier than a looming horde of normal-speed zombies? Answer: A looming horde of normal-speed zombies with robot brains. That's the kind of nightmare we'll soon be facing once Valve puts the finishing touches on an update for Left 4 Dead 2, which will add Infected bots to the game's Versus mode to help balance out one-on-one games.

In addition, Valve's doing some tweaking to the zombie auto-spawning which occurs during the finale events in Versus mode. Apparently, the developer decided that the average 34.56% chance of survival for the human team was a little too low, and is trying to balance things out by disabling auto-spawning during the campaigns' climaxes. Of course, none of that will matter when the human team is attempting to escape from robot zombies.

Are you looking for a way to give your PS3-owning friends the gift of zombie immolation, but desire to do so on a tight budget? Look no more, dearest reader: Doublesix's undead-roasting twin-stick shooter Burn Zombie Burn! is now available on Amazon for $9.99. We imagine the game's sales will increase exponentially once Amazon starts recommending it to people shopping for Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Or people shopping for the soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever.

It was rough yesterday when we heard that Irrational Games had a really incredible sounding zombie game called "Division 9" buried under its floorboards, never to be released. Ask our loved ones, we cried, moped, cried some more, and then consumed tubs of Chubby Hubby. We lost count -- it was that bad.

And now that we've seen screens and video of the project, via Game Informer; now that we know the game has a dark, desperate, realistic feel that's even better than we imagined? Well, it's frankly more than we can bear. If you need us, we'll be in the frozen desserts aisle ... or maybe the whiskey aisle. Jury's still out.

Super Hyper Dimensional Mega Games has a good idea about how to market an iPhone game: put a bunch of stuff people like in it. Its upcoming title, Pro Zombie Soccer, combines all of the drama of one of the world's top sports with the undead, gnawing fury of your favorite zombie film. It's kinda like the guy who accidentally discovered peanut butter and chocolate go great together. Man, we love that guy.

Head past the break for a trailer from the upcoming game, which goes out of its way to also include heavenly satellite death lazers. Now how's that for effective marketing?

In its ongoing support of Left 4 Dead 2 on the PC, Valve has issued another patch for the game, fixing a number of problems including physics crashes and hit boxes on the Charger, Jockey and Spitter. Some of the exploits PC gamers have stumbled upon have also been eradicated, including incapped survivors improving their weapon accuracy by holding the crouch button -- though we wouldn't call that an exploit so much as a natural evolution in the face of the zombie threat. Good, old-fashioned human ingenuity is what will win us this war, people!

You can head past the break for the full patch notes. An update for the Xbox 360 will be available "later this month."

What's the only thing worse than having two dead team members, an approaching wave of special infected, and a fresh sheen of Boomer puke on your person? Having to suffer all those things while also -- fighting -- server la -- tency issues. Fortunately, that experience has become less common, as Valve recently did a bit dusting around their network infrastructure, reducing lag during bouts of Left 4 Dead 2 on Xbox 360.

Of course, even without the lag, you're still going to die. But at least now you'll be able to see where it's coming from. (Hint: It's probably from those three oncoming tanks.)

We've already told you about Blizzard/NCsoft vet Jeff Strain's startup, Undead Labs, which is creating a zombie-centric, console-based MMO (sorry, marketing dept., we're not going to call it an MMOZ), but we haven't told you much about the game itself. Though this Eurogamer interview still provides next to no perspective on that topic, it does offer a considerable amount of insight into how much Strain thinks about zombies.

Take this gem for instance: "People are passionate about zombies ... the reason I'm talking about it is because I want zombie fans. I want the best developers in the industry that love zombies to want to work here."

Or perhaps this: "The reason zombies are so powerful and transcend fantasy is because right now they are the modern, societal guilt-free meat-puppet. We've been through the Nazi phase, we've been through the communist phase, we've been through the terrorist phase. Those were all at various times in history fair game in the gaming culture. Right now zombies are fulfilling that need for us. That no-rules, no-guilt mentality is something that people really resonate with."

So, what Strain is saying is that we used to be really angry at terrorists, but now, instead of that, we hate zombies. Will history remember how close Strain just came to inventing the zombie terrorist, the video game enemy that will someday unite the world, Wyld Stallyns-style? We suspect it will not.

Are you enjoying the zombie-massacring action presented in Left 4 Dead 2, but wish the game had more ... panache? The upcoming DLC pack for Borderlands, titled The Zombie Island of Doctor Ned, might just offer the stylish undead action you crave. Check out the trailer after the break to see what we mean. Spoiler alert: In the video, zombie faces get punched into gooey paste, Were-Skags get euthanized, and birds get flipped. It's probably not suitable for the faint of heart.

The walking corpse-infested landmass is downloadable today on 360 and PS3 for 800/$9.99.