Not a lot of interesting news the entire week, so I’ll just post whatever bit of news I had in this small post. First off Kane and Lynch is set for a release on the 20th of November. At least now we have an exact date for this awesome game in the making. There’s also been sort of an update on the minimum requirements for Crysis:

CPU:	Intel P4 2.8Ghz or AMD equivalent
RAM:	1GB
Video Card:	6800GT (256mb) or ATI/AMD Radeon 9800 Pro (256mb)
HDD Space:	16GB
OS:	Microsoft Windows [XP and Vista I imagine]
Sound Card:	DirectX 9.0c Compatible

Still… Not too bad for such a great game. In other news, there a small update on the format war’s progress and a potential end to it might be closer than you think.

A stand alone Blu-ray player sells for about $500, while HD DVD players cost about $400, and prices are expected to drop further as the holiday shopping season nears.

Gownder said Blu-ray’s content advantages are somewhat diminished since the recent decision by Viacom Inc’s (VIAb.N: Quote, Profile, Research) Paramount studio to commit exclusively to HD DVD. HD DVD hardware prices have also dropped into consumers’ preferred price range, he said.

“Weakened by these developments, Blu-ray needs to offer a viable hardware model at the $250 price point by Christmas 2007,” he said in the report. “The Blu-ray camp must also stave off further studio defections, and employ more aggressive promotional tactics to counter HD DVD’s recent momentum.”

You can read the rest of the article right here. And that was about it. Of course with the upcoming holiday season we’re going to be washed away by games, movies and nextgen hardware so next time I’m sure there’ll be a lot more interesting stuff to read about.

Escape to New York gets a remake? I was just crawling Wikipedia and accidentally stumbled upon this.

According to a March 12, 2007 article in Variety magazine, Gerard Butler is close to signing a deal where he will play Snake Plissken in a remake of Carpenter’s movie. Neal Moritz will produce and Ken Nolan will write the screenplay which will combine an original story for Plissken with the story from the 1981 movie, although Carpenter has hinted that the film might be a prequel. An article in the Hollywood Reporter revealed that New Line Cinema has acquired the rights to the film from co-rights holder StudioCanal who will control the European rights and Carpenter who will serve as an executive producer and is quoted as saying, “Snake is one of my fondest creations. Kurt Russell did an incredible job, and it would be fun to see someone else try.” Russell has recently commented on the remake and his thoughts on the casting of Butler as Plissken: “I will say that when I was told who was going to play Snake Plissken, my initial reaction was “Oh, man!” [Russell winces]. I do think that character was quintessentially one thing. And that is, American.” Variety magazine reported that Len Wiseman will direct the film.

Can’t wait for this already!

World of Warcraft THE MOVIE, please tell me it never gets made. There are plans though, so maybe some day this abomination of a movie will hit theaters near you.

Venom will get its own spin-off movie though no further information is available at this moment.

Condemned (game) will get a movie adaption after all. This was know back when the original came out but as always with this kind of news, it went dark and no one heard of it since. But now it looks like it’s actually on its way!

“I actually just closed a deal to do another big rewrite of the script. There is a director attached. I can’t say who until Warners makes it official. But the project is very much alive (especially after the surprising success of THE 300).” Sutter told the site, before going on to outline just how the game and the film are planned to co-exist.

“As far as the story, I cannot give any details, but i think we’ve done something very unique…There will be some parallels, but it is not a movie BASED ON the game. It’s INSPIRED BY the same source material.”

I’m curious how this is going to end up since it’s based on the game. Will this be like that Final Fantasy movie where nothing from the original game is left but references and names? I hope not. Source

Update: There’s more!

The Hollywood Reporter brings word today that director Tarsem Singh, last seen in the Hollywood studio system with 2000 Jennifer Lopez vehicle The Cell, is attached to direct The Unforgettable, the film adaptation of Condemned: Criminal Origins. Previously known as Species X, The Unforgettable is expected to follow the plot of the Xbox 360 launch title, which found a detective stumbling into the supernatural over the course of a criminal investigation. Warner Bros. Pictures is behind the adaptation, with David Goyer, Basil Iwanyk, and Monolith Productions co-founder Jason Hall set to produce. Hall co-created the original game concept with Nathan Hendrickson, so at least there’s a common creative strand between the film and the original release. Kurt Sutter, writer/producer of several episodes of FX series The Shield, penned the script.

I’m actually looking forward to this a little more than before now. Source

A Crank sequel is on the way!

“There will be a sequel to Crank yes. Prepare to Crank again,” Taylor told the site. “And you know the ‘is it a sequel or prequel’ question… IT’S A SEQUEL. We’re not selling out and going prequel. We are picking up where the last movie left off.”

I really liked the first one because of its crazy MTV-ish speed and adrenaline pumping action sequences combined with dark humor here and there. What other movie ever had a scene in which a tied of cross dresser gets shot up and used as a shield from a rain of bullets? And who doesn’t want to see a sequel to that?!

Jungle Book gets turned into a live action movie? Meh.

Pathe and the BBC are joining forces to back a $50 million live-action movie based on Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book.

The project will be directed by BBC natural-history filmmaker John Downer from a script by Richard Kurti and Bev Doyle. Michelle Fox (102 Dalmatians) will produce for Downer’s company.

Downer, whose lion drama-documentary Pride was nominated for an Emmy in 2004, has pioneered the technique of filming animals in the wild and then using CGI manipulation to make them appear to talk.

He will shoot in the Ranthambore Tiger Reserve in India and intercut this footage with footage of trained animals shot both on jungle sets in the U.K. and against bluescreens.

Preparation for the film will start in September, with the entire production process taking two years to complete.

Kipling’s “Jungle Books” tell the story of Mowgli, a boy raised by wolves. He’s kidnapped by monkeys and rescued by his animal friends, including Baloo the Bear, Bagheera the panther and Kaa the python. But when it comes to fighting the tiger Sher Khan, Mowgli must do that on his own.

Of course I watched the Disney movie when I was a little kid! But do we really need a live action adaptin of another Tarzan look-a-like? Source

More directors added to The Pacific. I’m still looking forward to this mini-series which should become the Band of Brothers of the pacific theater of war during World War Two.

Graham Yost, Tony To and Jeremy Podeswa have been added to the roster of directors on HBO’s $200 million “The Pacific,” which has begun production in Australia.

The directors join previously revealed “Pacific” helmers Tim Van Patten and Carl Franklin, with more to be announced later.

To and Yost also are co-exec producers on the mega-miniseries. Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg and Gary Goetzman, the team behind 2001’s Emmy-winning limited series “Band of Brothers,” are executive producers.

Designed as a companion to “Band of Brothers,” “The Pacific” tells the story of three U.S. Marines fighting in the Pacific theater during WWII: James Badge Dale plays Robert Leckie, while Joe Mazzello is on board as Eugene Sledge and Jon Seda is cast as John Basilone.

Yost’s credits include HBO’s “From the Earth to the Moon,” while To was involved with “Band of Brothers” and Podeswa’s resume includes “Six Feet Under.”

DreamWorks TV and Playtone, along with HBO Films, are behind “The Pacific,” which is pegged to a 2009 launch.

A 2009 launch? FUUUUUUCK!!! Source

An Underworld prequel? I personally thought the first movie was decent and the second was kinda decent as well but come on, more Underworld movies?! How much did these mediocre crapfests make to get yet another shitty addition to the franchise?!

ComingSoon.net caught up with Feast of Love producer Tom Rosenberg on Tuesday and asked him whether Screen Gems is continuing the “Underworld” franchise, which has raked in about $207 million worldwide on fairly low budgets.

Rosenberg told us that you can expect an announcement shortly about another installment in the franchise. He said that Len Wiseman, who directed his wife Kate Beckinsale in the first two films, will be producing the new movie.

Asked if this could possibly reboot the franchise, Rosenberg added, “It could. It’s a prequel. Some people think it could be rebooted. I don’t know. I’m not there yet.”

He would not say whether Beckinsale would appear in the prequel.

No seriously, how much did they make with the first two movies?

Keanu Reeves returns to sci-fi in this new movie in which he’s a humanoid alien!

Variety reports that actor Keanu Reeves has signed onto Twentieth Century Fox’s remake of the 1951 science fiction classic The Day the Earth Stood Still, to be directed by Scott Derrickson (The Exorcism of Emily Rose) from a script by David Scarpa.

Reeves will be playing the part of Klaatu, a humanoid alien who arrives on Earth accompanied by an indestructible, heavily armed robot and a warning to world leaders that their continued aggression will lead to annihilation by species watching from afar.

The production is looking at a late fall or early 2008 start as a planned tentpole for the studio.

Returning Reeves to the world of science fiction for the first time since “The Matrix” trilogy, plans are to update the original 1951 movie, which was directed by Robert Wise, using the advances in visual effects. The role of Klaatu in the original movie was played by Michael Rennie.

Sound good! Source

The end of the format war is near! Could it be? Could it be that Sony just lost another format war? Lets hope so, ’cause then maybe they’d finally give up after failing every format they’ve ever attempted. Licensed production and too much control over a format doesn’t work!

A week ago, it looked as if Blu-ray was going to be the winner of the HD battle. The momentum of Blu-ray was increasing with Blu-ray movies such as 300 outselling the HD-DVD counterpart by almost 2:1. In fact, one week ago, Universal remained the only HD-DVD exclusive studio. If you were interested in movies from every other major studio, Blu-ray was the smart choice. It would only be a matter of time before Universal caved in and went dual-format and Blu-ray’s victory was imminent.

On August 20, 2007, Paramount and Dreamworks Pictures changed the course of the war. After being a format neutral studio in the last year, Paramount elected to switch to HD-DVD exclusively for an 18 month period. Those looking to get Transformers in high-definition or any movie from Paramount Pictures, DreamWorks Pictures, Paramount Vantage, Nickelodeon Movies, and MTV Films, and Dreamworks Animation would now need to go to the HD DVD camp; Steven Spielberg’s movies being the sole exception. The New York Times has since reported that Paramount’s and DreamWorks Animation’s decision was driven by $150 million of financial incentives.

There’s more and it’s an interesting little read.

Alien VS Predator Requim’s age restricted trailer is up on IGN. Yes, just enter some random birth date that sets you above 18 years or something and you’re good to go. The trailer can be found right here.

Tha Fast and the Furious 4 is being rumored to have Paul Walker, Tyrese Gibson and… VIN DIESEL back in Rio teaming up for reasons unknown. With Vin Diesel back I don’t care if they have to save the universe from the evil street racer from hell, it’s fucking Vin Diesel man!!

Kane and Lynch movie gets fast-tracked. Awesome news on the sped up production of the movie adaption of the upcoming game Kane and Lynch: Dead Men.

Apparently, Lionsgate likes what they’re seeing in an adaptation of forthcoming Eidos action game Kane and Lynch: Dead Men. IGN reports that the studio has fast-tracked the film to start shooting in the fall from a script by Kyle Ward. (We’ll save you a click, he’s done one movie and you haven’t heard of it.)

According to IGN though, you probably have heard of at least one of the actors who are interested in playing one of the lead roles. If Lionsgate is looking for name actors here, we’d like to throw in a suggestion: Jonathan Taylor Thomas and Zachery Ty Bryan. No one would see that coming. Now, if they’d complete the Home Improvement trifecta and cast Taran Noah Smith as a cop hell-bent on bringing them to justice, we’d go ahead and pre-order our tickets today.

I can’t wait for the game as it has “Hollywood blockbuster” written all over it, so a movie adaption is like the easiest thing in the world to do! But I’m guessing they’ll manage to fuck it up some how. Lets face it, movie adaptions of games never do well at the box office. Source

The Wolverine spin-off gets a release date.

Wolverine for a November start with Hugh Jackman returning as the title character.

The site adds that, while the previous three “X-Men” films have been shot in Vancouver, the new spin-off will be shot in Sydney, Australia.

The film will be directed by Gavin Hood (Rendition, Tsotsi) from a script by David Benioff.

At this point I’m just curious seeing as he’s the coolest X-Men character but every superhero spin-off has failed up until now. I just hope there’ll be more story than action seeing as that’s the one thing I want to see in a Wolferine spin-off. If it turns into a movie with him slashing his way through hordes of bad guys with little to no relevant storyline whatsoever than this movie is gonna suck big time.

New Rambo trailer. Like the previous trailer this one is filled with over-the-top action and even less story. In the previous trailer we saw that a couple of activists were taken hostage or something and of course Rambo will go and save them all the while killing hundreds upon hundreds of miscellaneous enemy soldiers. I guess the fans of the franchise will love it and I will probably end up watching it in a few years when it’s aired on TV.

Samuel L. Jackson in Cleaner. The first trailer for this could-be interesting thriller is out now. Samuel plays a guy who cleans up crime scenes and, as always, is pulled into a big conspiracy. This trailer actually made me think… Who the hell has this job in real life? Can you imagine yourself cleaning up little pieces of flesh, bone and other icky little organic stinkin’ crap? I couldn’t even clean up public toilets!

New Incredible Hulk set photos show us a street with a whole bunch of fucked up cars. It would seem the Hulk even threw a car into a bus! What’s more disturbing though, is that Edwart Norton is involved in writing the script as well as playing Bruce Bana. Check it out.

No DX10 in ID Tech5. A weird choice for a nextgen engine with cheap DX10 cards becoming available and the inevitable switch to Vista that awaits every Windows user.

GI: Will this engine support any DX10 features? Carmack: No, not currently. We’re not expecting to. We’re not sure if we’re going to be a Vista title or not. There will be some support benefits by being Vista only. It depends when we get the game done what the adoption has been. But it’s a OpenGL title on the PC and Mac right now, obviously D3D on the 360, and the PS3 it’s kind of an in between where it’s Open GLES but we do a lot of direct command buffer writing there. If necessary we can move the PC version over to DX10, but there’s not much strong pull for us to do that. All of the toolset is in OpenGL, I wouldn’t want to convert everything over.

GI: You didn’t seem to hot on DX10 or Vista at CES.

Carmack: Microsoft has done a great job with all this stuff. I mean, I honestly think that DX9 with how it’s implemented on the 360 is a clearer and more open API than OpenGL is. It doesn’t hide the state.

That’s sort of the Microsoft way. They start off with a piece of crap, and then over a number of versions taking a lot of people with them over the painful route they eventually get to something that’s better than what they are competing against. It’s a valid strategic direction. I think they’ve come out at the end with a good platform and a good product. Some of the DX10 stuff I don’t think there’s going to be huge draws for the features there, but a lot of what they’ve done with the structuring of the API I think are still positive things to do there. I think they have a good team with solid engineering there.

Carmack is always very resistant to new technologies for some reason. But fuck him, just because he was one of those basement programmers back in the old days doesn’t mean he knows everything, in fact I think his arrogance is the main cause for his quick jumpy conclusions that everything new sucks. Every time I talk about Carmack I just think: This was the guy that said true 3D was just a temporary fad. Hah, what an idiot… Here’s the entire interview.

How PR shapes gaming journalism. Now here’s an interesting article!

You’ve probably heard the term thrown around, but what, exactly, does a PR rep do? “I work to educate and inform the media about our new product offerings and services,” says Michael Wolf, the PR manager for Games for Windows (the initiative, not the magazine). “The job of the media, in turn, is to carry their opinions about what I’ve told them to the public. The ultimate goal being to get coverage through online outlets, print publications, broadcast media, podcasts, etc.”

Wolf’s diplomatic description of PR represents the ideal relationship between game industry journalists and the products they cover. But more often publicists seek not just to drum up press coverage, but to deliver positive coverage, preferably framed by certain points the game’s marketers have deemed important to get across to the public (Spore is about evolution. Crysis is pretty, etc.). In short, they try to influence what the game press tell their readers, and how they say it.

As a simple fact of life, game writers and editors work with publicists on a daily basis, gathering the stories that populate their publications. But does PR really influence coverage? Do publicists really affect what you read in gaming publications across the web and on the newsstands? The very existence of the profession would seem to imply so. The real question is: How and to what extent? To find out, we spoke to several current and former game industry publicists—though many representing top-tier publishers refused (or were not allowed) to be interviewed—about their methods.

It’s 5 pages long but it’s totally worth it. It’s kinda like those hippie conspiracy theories ‘cept this one’s real. Read the full article here!

SC: Conviction too good for PS3. Not my words but I’m loving this. Yes that’s right I’m a total Sony bashing whore and every bit of bad news for Sony brings endless joy to my entire week.

So, Conviction is confirmed for PC and Xbox 360. But what about the other consoles? Double Agent was a 360 exclusive for a whole week. On this issue, Danny could give us a firm answer. “It’s NEVER gonna come out on the PS3 or the Wii.” It’s a logical decision. Nintendo’s console simply doesn’t have the graphical horsepower, and he candidly told us how the PS3 can’t handle AI nearly as well as the 360.

So there’s that. It says that the 360 is better at handling the AI and not that the PS3 can’t handle it at all, but that’s obvious with the 360’s tradition CPU and the PS3’s weird experimental Cell processor. Here’s the whole thing.

A CryEngine 2 MMO is on the way!

Seoul, South Korea-based XLGames was founded in 2003 by Lineage creator Jake Song, former executive VP of NCsoft.

It’s not the first time Song has used Crytek’s technology. He used the CryEngine 1 technology for NCsoft’s MMO Aion, which is yet to be released.

Crytek managing director Faruk Yerli said in a statement, “Jake Song is a true pioneer and legend in the world of massively multiplayer games, having almost single handedly created the original market for them in Asia. To now have his own company select the CryENGINE 2 as their middleware, and Crytek as their primary technology provider, demonstrates a high level of confidence in our tools and technology

In July, Swedish developer MindArk signed a licensing agreement with Crytek that will bring CryEngine 2 to the virtual world, Entropia Universe.

Well that is interesting, I mean a CryEngine 1 MMO isn’t that hard to imagine but I’m having some serious problems with a CryEngine 2 MMO mainly because hardly anyone can run Crysis in DX10 mode at maxed out graphics, so now you won’t just get DX10 graphics but you’ll also get a huge world with thousands of gorgeous player models walking around doing their thing? Expect this title to be released in stores near you somewhere around 2023. Source

No more online activation for BioShock in the future? Quoted from EvilAvatar, here’s something that might confuse you…

Given the internets and what they are — with their tubes and all — I want to sort of talk about the concerns people have. We take the concerns people have very seriously. There’s been some concern like, “What happens if it’s three years from now, or ten years from now, when I want to play this game. And, you know, Irrational Games has been hit by a meteor?” We will unset the online activation at some point in the future — we’re not talking about when. If people have concern about that they shouldn’t be worried about that. This activation is for the early period of the game when it’s really hot and there are people really trying to find ways to play the game without buying it. Of course, there are a lot of people who are legitimately trying to play it. We’re not trying to be Draconian, we’re trying to find a balance.

Yes, that makes perfect sense! Wait until no one wants your game anymore and then remove the copy protection. Why not? Well how about it being a totally pointless gesture that will yield zero results?! Yeah that’s why.

New Valve IP’s? Oh my God…

You know, if you get two Valve people together, they’re inventing new games. We’re just sort of looking to find out how much we can design. God, I would love to work on a turn-based strategy game, personally. Maybe we’ll get around to it, but not a lot of people would agree. But our ambitions have stripped our ability to ship by a couple of orders of packaging. But I’m sure there will be some doing new worlds, doing new game types. Hopefully, the flexibility we get by going for smaller projects will let us be more experimental rather than spending half a decade to come up with a whole project.

I love you Valve. Source (Not their engine, the article’s source.)

BioShock easter egg. Not really the best easter egg ever but it’s worth mentioning anyway.

Now that that’s out of the way…

Free C&C!! Yay! I still have the original CD’s but for those of you who lost those, you can now download the very first Command and Conquer for free! No not by means of P2P networks, straight from EA!

In order to give back to the fans for over 12 years of devotion we are putting together a 12th Anniversary celebration during the month of September. However, as any Command & Conquer fan knows, the true party starts today, August 31st, which marks 12 years since Command & Conquer Gold launched way back in 1995.

To kick the celebration off, today we have a special surprise which we are certain new and old Command & Conquer fans will enjoy. We are providing the original Command & Conquer Gold as a free download, compatible for Windows XP! This is the same version included with the collectors pack Command and Conquer: The First Decade, and is now available for you to download for free!

You can download it here.

More free games! You probably won’t want these but just in case, here they are. FilePlanet is giving away Tom Clancy’s, Ghost Recon, Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, Far Cry and Rayman Raving Rabbids! I think Far Cry is the only one worth mentioning here. Also, these games are all ad supported! I don’t know how but they just are. Here are the links:

Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon
Prince of Persia: Sands of Time
Far Cry
Rayman Raving Rabbids

Have fun… Or something.

F.E.A.R. sequel is now officially titled Project Origin. After the game’s plot device. How original.

Lara Croft to move to France? Ubisoft seems very interested in the Tomb Raider franchise, which is a good thing because they rock and everything they touch turns to freaking gold.

Ah, corporate takeovers, they make the business world go round. SCI Entertainment, owner of Eidos, has confirmed to The Guardian that they’ve received a bid for their company, the second instance in just two years. It’s believed the bid came from the French company Ubisoft, possibly looking to add Tomb Raider to its portfolio. Though a bid approach would mean Ubisoft is interested, SCi attributes their dropping stock to the PlayStation 3 launch delay and that Ubisoft’s rumored bid could simply be an opportunistic move — to them, if the option’s there, why not?

Here’s the source.

Master Chief’s wax model finished! I posted the unfinished wax model on KTB some time ago and now it’s finished.

It looks like GamerTagRadio definitely had the scoop on this story, the statue was created in London and flown to Vegas for the big reveal. In the end the Master Chief statue is 7′2″ tall and weighs 275 lbs, he required ten artists who worked 892 man-hours. And he’s not made out of wax like we would think, it actually took 1,000 pounds of clay to put him together. Madame Tussauds tells us that there will be an event at the Vegas location for the Halo 3 launch, but details are still being worked out with Microsoft. The statue is currently on display with plenty of Halo related merchandising, merchandising — where the real money from the game is made.

The full article can be found right here.

The UT3 OST is available for free and can be found right here! Thanks Epic.

Guitar Hero 3 is coming to PC and Mac! Unfortunately the source I have is Dutch but I’ll give you the summary. There’s going to be a USB guitar but you can also utilize your good ol’ mouse and keyboard. There will be no changes done to the game’s graphics and they’re aiming for a simultaneous PC and Mac release. This is not a rumor people. Here’s the source for all those who want to throw it through a translator.

Fortress Forever is released! The long awaited HL2 mod is finally out, but now it’s too late cause no one will give a crap by Monday when the Team Fortress 2 BETA starts. Oops.

Fortress Forever is a Team Fortress mod for Half-life 2’s Source Engine. Our independent team is creating this mod entirely from scratch.

Fortress Forever should please those who have stuck with or been a part Half-life: TFC over the years while at the same time doing more for new TF players than any prior Fortress attempt.

Fortress Forever will be free to those who purchase Half-life 2.

Here’s the official website where you’ll find plenty of mirrors and info.

Crysis DX9 vs DX10 in multiplayer. Now I’m glad I have a nice GeForce 8800…

To shed some light into one of the most discussed topics regarding Crysis multiplayer I would like to explain you the differences between Crysis MP DX9 and DX10.

As for the DX9 version we won’t have physics and day and night cycle in-game. That means you won’t be able to shoot down trees and/or alter any other objects than vehicles on the map. Additionally the time of day setting doesn’t change dynamically. This is caused due to the tremendous server load such physics might cause on crowded gaming servers. Still you will be able to experience maps with different time of day settings since the maps can be altered in the Sandbox2 Editor.

Rather than providing the community partially working features we limit this for the DX10 version only. Due to the strong hardware available with DX10, server load is less and performance is increased. This ensures the pure physics and day and night cycle experience without any limitation.

Gamers with a DX10 card are able to play on DX9 servers, but with the limitation of the respective server. Vice versa it is not possible for gamers with DX9 cards to play on DX10 servers due to the limited features.

Multiplayer is gonna be awesome! If you have a DX10 card that is. Here’s the full article.

E3 2008 changing AGAIN. The way E3 presents itself is going through yet another change. No, it´s not going back to being a huge convention for tens of thousands of people, but it´s definitely going to get bigger and the bet news is: No more fucking hangar!! In fact, the whole city of LA is out of the picture for at least 2008 as they’re moving to other places.

After ditching the Los Angeles Convention Center, E3 moved from its traditional all-trade May show for 60,000 visitors, to a media and analysts’ show in Santa Monica this year capped at around 3,000 delegates. But MCV can exclusively reveal that the show will move next year, having only stayed in Santa Monica due to a contractual commitment to run some kind of exhibition in the LA city environs. The need for a ‘floorspace’ area explains the much-derided Barker Hanger product showcase. A full review of the event will be conducted by organiser the Entertainment Software Association, but change seems guaranteed.

Well, I guess we’ll have to wait and see what this will bring. I hope they’re going back to a May date since all publishers are announcing new games and stuff around that time due to E3 always having been in May. There’s more!

The future of warfare begins now! There’s a new soldier on the battlefield, and it’s not human. If that doesn’t freak you out enough you’ll be shocked to hear that it fires an M249 without any backfiring whatsoever. So basically this thing can shot your head clean off without missing a single bullet while firing between 725 to 1000 bullets per minute! Yeah, I’d really hate to stand in front of one of those fuckers with an AK-47. Good thing I’m not an insurgent, eh?

GayGamer under attack. Some homophobic moron with too much spare time on his hands has been attacking GayGamer.net because just a day before he woke up next to a homosexual feeling all funny and stuff. Just get out of the closet you fucking asshole. (No pun intended.)

GayGamer.net, a site aimed at providing news and reviews for gay gamers, as well as being a safe haven for gay gamers, has been taken offline after a series of malevolent and hateful attacks forced it off the internets. Yes, all of them,

Flynn DeMarco, the owner of GayGamer.net and weekend editor for Kotaku, said that what started as a series of small denial of service attacks on Wednesday morning soon grew into something more threatening. Throughout Thursday the site suffered occasional time-outs but was working on fixing the problem.

Come Friday the site, working with its host, was able to block the IP address the DOS attacks were stemming from. This only made matters worse however as the the sites forums and chat rooms were soon flooded with hate speech and death threats against the sites providers, writers and members.

According to DeMarco, all of the attacks and posts originated from the same IP in Philidelphia.

There’s more to the story here.

PS3 haters take on a more serious stand. Now more than ever the violent war between X-Box owners and PlayStation owners is waging on as a 13 year old decided that flame wars was for pussies. Instead, the young man decided to show the world how he felt by spreading his PS hate in the real world.

The Young man had used a permanent black marker to write, “PS3 Sucks” on 23 plastic security cases used to protect the Sony Playstation games from being stolen from the “R” Zone section of the store. The Young man was held until police arrived. After his parents were unable to be reached he was taken to child services.

When he was asked why he did it by police he responded, “I have an Xbox and I hate Playstation. I found the marker lying on the shelf and I guess I was bored. Sorry.”

That sounds like the words of a true Playstation hater. Looks like Microsoft has a customer for life.

Whenever they start fighting each other on the streets, that’s when I’ll join the X-Box owners. Because I love how their console is suffering from much less problems, even though the problems they do have are far more serious. Console fanboys… They make me laugh every time, and I’m not joking either. Source

Game graphics to be dumbed down for consoles. Here’s something that surprised me although I should have seen it coming. With DX10 out and Crysis coming out very soon as well it seems that consoles are going to make games like Crysis a rarity. How is that? Well since consoles don’t support DX10 games on consoles will have to do with the current gen graphics while the PC platform allows for much more advanced visuals and technology. Believe it or not, but Gears of War is as good as it will get in terms of graphical technology. Sure there will be better looking games with more objects and higher poly counts, but the visual effects will remain the same.

“To be honest, and I’m going to cast a small pall on the industry here, I don’t think you’re going to get much higher until the next generation of consoles,” Rein told CVG when asked what we can expect from DX 10 beyond what we’re seeing in Crysis.
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Rein reckons there are developers who will dabble with DirectX 10 and a couple of PC-only games, or games that their big market is PC, will push the envelope a bit, “But I don’t see people going way, way over what these consoles can do because then they can’t sell the game… they have to dumb the games down for the consoles. Consoles will pretty much define what the next five years of games look like on the PC”, Rein added.

So PC gamers are screwed by the decreasing popularity of their platform due to piracy and other crap, and now we’re double screwed because the platforms that are only becoming more mainstream are forcing developers to make priorities. PC versions will not be very high priorities, so we’ll have to endure some graphically handicapped games until the next generation of consoles is out. Fuckin’ consoles…  From EvilAvatar.

New Project Offset trailer! Finally we get to see some real gameplay from Project Offset (working title). It doesn’t look nearly as impressive as the previous tech demos but it’s got a few big creatures that have further stimulated the rumor mill on the PO forums.

BioShock demo soon? The full game will be release on the 28th but perhaps we’ll get a demo soon? I’d definitely want to check the game out before it’s release but I’ll get it anyway since I’m a total System Shock whore. No I never did complete those games but I was way too young to know what the hell was going on anyway. The lonely atmosphere the games gave me was pretty damn intense though.

According to the latest list of age ratings to be published by Germany’s USK board, a demo of Irrational’s Bioshock is due for imminent release.

Unsurprisingly, the demo has been rated 18 by the board, although its entry on the official USK website doesn’t specify when we’ll be seeing it on the Marketplace.
However, with Bioshock due to be released in all its horrific glory on the 24 August, we wouldn’t be too surprised if the demo popped up in the next couple of weeks, so as to ensure people get a full-on taste of what 2K Games and Irrational will be dishing up shortly after.

If BioShock can live up to that, it’ll be one of those games you’ll never forget. Like… Morrowind. Good times.

DVD’s no longer big enough? It would seem that size DOES matter… When talking about the capacity of mediums such as DVD´s.

You won’t see different times of day per city because this involves recreating all the textures again (one for day and one for night). Whilst this wasn’t a problem for our dev team, it was a problem fitting all this data onto a single DVD. So we’ve worked around the problem by providing different lighting models per city. For example, Macau is always in the daytime, but if you play it during a storm everything looks darker and more foreboding. If you play during a blizzard then things are slightly tinged blue and everything seems more frozen. Of course, playing this track in sunshine will make everything appear bright and yellowy.

Hehe, how long until X-Box gamers have to buy that HD-DVD player in order to play the latest games? Source

New Red Faction game coming! Are you ready for fully destructible maps powered by some super physics engine? I… Am not sure.

During THQ’s quarterly earnings call Wednesday, the company confirmed that a new Red Faction game is in the works.

“Last quarter, we announced Saints Row 2. Today, we are confirming the next Red Faction game,” said THQ boss Brian Farrell in a conference call today.

The game apparently won’t be available until THQ’s next fiscal year.

Source

Crysis release date countdown!! Crysis will be out on November 16th. I have full confidence in Crytek as they did an amazing job on Far Cry and they never delayed it once! That’s why Far Cry was the first nextgen game of the previous generation long before Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 hit stores. Don’t betray my trust Crytek!

Yup…

Google Ads in-game! I don’t have any problems with in-game advertising as long as it’s done properly. What would be a smart move would be if they’d put that good ol’ AdSense box in the in-game server browser of games. That would be acceptable. Advertisement could also be used to make some games more realistic. Instead of having fake ads like in GTA they could place real ads on big billboards in GTA IV or similar games.

Stolar, Google’s Game Evangelist, said, “I’m going to be very clear right now: Google is involved in in-game advertising. I’m going to say it one more time, in case there’s any misconceptions here: in-game advertising. This is an area that Google believes will have tremendous growth over the next number of years. … We are not going to be a publisher or a developer or a portal for games, at all. That’s the jobs of everybody here. That’s why we want to partner with you.”

Sports games are obviously the perfect target for in-game advertising but games like those have been doing in-game advertising for a few years now so that market is pretty much established already. What I don’t want to see are Toyota ads in Mass Effect or something. Stuff like Coca Cola would be doable if the ads were modified to fit the game or something. Like Coca Cola in Mass Effect, that would be funny. Source

MoH: Airborne developer walkthrough’s are now available right here on GameTrailers.

Far Cry developer dairies can be found right here.

WoW: Wrath of the Lich King confirmed! Oh God… No…

The Lich King Arthas has set in motion events that could lead to the extinction of all life on Azeroth. With the armies of the undead and the necromantic power of the plague threatening to sweep across the land, only the mightiest heroes can oppose the Lich King’s will and end his reign of terror for all time.

You can’t leave the WoW junkies hanging can you Blizzard? No way! What if they would finally pick up their lifes?! DATS GUNA KOST US MONI! So be it, I’m clean and yes I have played WoW for a few days and I thought it sucked like every other MMORPG I’ve every played in my life. Check it out!

ID announced their new game franchise! And it’s called: RAGE! It’s set in a Mad Max-ish world with Asians. Hmm. Weird? Yeah. What about gameplay? From what I have seen thus far: It’s more Doom style crap. ID, it’s 2007. Not 1997.

John Carmack, co-founder and technical director of id Software, took the stage today at QuakeCon 2007 at the Hilton Anatole in Dallas for his annual keynote address and reaffirmed the company’s status as a video game industry and pop-culture leader, beginning with the unveiling of id Software’s new intellectual property, RAGE, complete with video footage from the highly-anticipated game. Additionally, Carmack shared details about id Software’s new gaming engine, id Tech5.

Here’s the GameTrailers video page.

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars is set to be release on the 2nd of October now.

Wolfenstein coming to a theater near you! FUCK! I hate the games and now I’m going to have to add a movie to my must-hate list!

The 2005 film adaptation of id Software’s first-person shooter Doom may not have packed the punch of a BFG 9000 at the box office, but now another of the Texas-based developer’s stable of first-person franchises is getting a shot at the big screen. Variety is reporting today that id’s Wolfenstein series of games is being adapted to a feature film.

The writer and producer behind Silent Hill are reteaming to create Return to Castle Wolfenstein, according to the Hollywood trade paper. The film will follow protagonist B.J. Blazkowicz and his squad of troops as they investigate Nazi experiments with the paranormal in the midst of World War II.

The film will be written and directed by Roger Avary, who won an Academy Award for Best Writing for his work on Pulp Fiction. His previous directorial work includes The Rules of Attraction and Killing Zoe. The producer on the film, Samuel Hadida, has also been behind the Resident Evil movies, and Good Night and Good Luck.

From GameSpot. Man… This sucks. I hate it when people fuck with the past in such an extreme manor as to add zombies and other monsters to World War Two

Must-see trailers:

1-18-08 looks like another “end of the world we’re all gonna die zomgz!!!!!11!!!1!”-type of movie. I generally enjoy these movies and this one appears to be from the writers of Lost. So… Does this mean half of the movie will take place in flashbacks? Lets hope not. The special effects look like crap and I’m not sure how much this movie is gonna suck but I’ll probably end up getting it as soon as it is released on DVD. Here’s the trailer!

10,000 B.C. looks like it could be the most original movie in recent years. I’m really looking forward to it as I am really interested in how they made a movie about a different world that we don’t even know anything more about than the stuff that we dug up and picked out of huge blocks of ice. But then again Steven Spielberg brought dinosaurs to life even though we don’t know anything about dinosaurs except that they were big motherfuckers with sharp teeth. Check the trailer out!

Gone Baby Gone is Ben Affleck’s first shot at directing. The plot seems to be pretty interesting but I’m more interested in what Ben is gonna do with the movie on his part. The movie is based on a book by the same author that wrote Mystic River, which is also a very intriguing movie and a must-see for all movie goers. In the mean while check out the trailer.

Ghosts of Cite Soleil is probably going to be the best documentary ever. Well maybe not the best documentary of all times but definitely the best one on it’s specific subject. In this documentary the film maker follows two brothers who both control a country. One of them is a big time gangster and the other one wants to become president of the country. Both of them want more power but they obviously have different goals. The way this movie is filmed and the color correction used along with a few other post-processing effects make the whole picture looks very damn intense and I will definitely check this out as soon as I can get my hands on a copy of the movie. Can I interest you in a trailer?

Into The Wild looks like an amazing movie with the rising star from The Girl Next Door an Alpha Dog. This movie really speaks to me as I was planning on doing something similar at one point in my life. This story is based on a true story, which makes it all the more immersing. It’s about this guy who gets spoiled like most other western kids but unlike most others he doesn’t want any of it. He just wants to live life in a way that was only possible hundreds of years ago. He journeys across the country to eventually reach Alaska. Of course the trip won’t be easy and he’ll really come to know himself along the way. I’m totally gonna check this out if they release it in Dutch theaters, for now though, a trailer is all we have.

Death Sentence is from the director of Saw. No idea why that would even matter but whatever. This movie looks like it starts off as a sports movie about an upcoming hockey player but then suddenly this kid gets killed by a bunch of lunatics who turn an armed robbery into a homicide case. The kid’s father obviously isn’t thrilled about the fact that his kid was killed for no reason, so he goes after the fuckers who did this and that’s where it turns into a revenge movie. Why is this a must-see? Because this is the movie you’ll want to watch on a Friday night when you’re bored but too tired to keep your attention to a masterminded super plot. Just some good ol’ shooting and fighting and killing and the end. Wanna see?

Indiana Jones being stretched to a seventh sequel?! Not only is everyone still waiting for City of Gods, the third sequel to the once very popular Indiana Jones series, but rumor has it that Harrison Ford and Shia LaBeouf have both signed a contract stating that they are obligated (too some degree I suspect) to play in two more sequels. Now this is just a contract so this doesn’t mean there’s going to be any more Indiana Jones sequels. It’s kinda like the contract the cast from Spider-Man signed back in the day. They signed for three movies, but if Spider-Man had been a box office flop then there would never have been a second movie let alone a third.

28 Months Later or whatever it’s gonna be called is no longer a good idea. It’s a reality. The director of the original movie has stated that he wanted to go back to the horror franchise he created but he’s not gonna make the movie in France like the ending of 28 Weeks Later suggested. Rather, he’s going to do it in Russia. Hmmm. Why Russia? France would’ve been awesome but noooo now we’re going to Russia. Probably because 28 days after the ending of 28 Weeks Later the zombies has invaded France, so just think how long it would take before the virus has spread throughout all of Europe and Asia. I’m placing my bets on 3 days tops. So in about 28 months I’m guessing the virus has spread to Africa as well and perhaps even to America. Hell, for all we know the world is already dead. But anyway, it’s going to be interesting to see what could happen in 28 months when it only took 28 days to exterminate most of Great-Britain.

Ace Venture 3?! God no. Say it ain’t so. Another sequel to a Jim Carrey hit…. Without Jim Carrey! This time we’re going to see Ace Ventura’s son doing all kinds of goofy stuff. Wait, he has a son now?! What the fuck!??!?!

In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale trailer leaked. Uwe Boll is making this fucking Dungeon Siege movie, ok no big deal. I was never a fan of Dungeon Siege so I’m cool with it. What I don’t understand is how he got three pretty damn good actors in his crapfest that is bound to suck. Jason Statham is now doing some martial arts shit combined with medieval sword fighting and then there’s this part where they steal several things from other much more successful movies like The Gladiator and Planet of the Apes. Yes. Planet of the Apes…
Clicky for the trailer.

Family Guy the movie has already been made. True. But it was a straight-to-DVD movie and not very exciting at all. Seth McFarlane, the dude behind Family Guy and American Dad and is also the voice of most of the characters on both shows, has dropped a hint about doing a real Family Guy movie, only it won’t be around the Griffins saving the world. An obvious insult to The Simpson Movie. Why? I love Family Guy and American Dad but you can’t fuck with The Simpsons!

The Silver Surfer spin-off gets a director and now we’re all going to get more F4 crap. I mean I “like” the two Fantastic For movie, but only because they’re so cheesy and unfunny that it makes me laugh just thinking about how fucked up the script writer had to be on meth and LSD to even think that that stuff would be funny. I would like to end this bit by pointing out the mediocre box office results from Daredevil and the pathetic P.O.S spin-off they made about it. Elektra is what I’m hinting at. I didn’t see the whole movie. In fact I only saw 15 minutes and already I knew that it could only get worse so I stopped watching.

No demo for Assassin’s Creed! No problem, I think it’s a no-brainer anyway, of course you’ll buy it as soon as it hits stores!

Fable 2 preview on IGN can be found here. It’s quite an interesting read if you liked Fable 1 or are simply showing some general interest in Fable 2.

The combat is contextual. It factors in your button presses, your skill level, yours and your opponent’s positions, and the environment. Stand near a bottle and you can hold X to pick up the bottle and toss it at an enemy. Fight in a bar and (with proper positioning and timing) you can swing off a chandelier to deliver an attack. Again, all of this is handled on a single button. Sounds crazy, but it works.

Perhaps most impressive is that the combat — the animations, combos, and flourishes — adapt with your character. When you are younger you will have different moves then when you become a seasoned hero. As you move from good to evil, your animations and flourishes also change. That Fable 2 could pack so many variations into its combat is a testament to Lionhead’s desire to deliver on its promises for an incredible RPG experience on Xbox 360.

Be sure to read the whole preview!

Killzone 2 video comparison might be something for all gamers to look at. The pre-rendered crap we saw at the PS3’s announcement several years ago is not that different from what the actual game looks like. Yes, a lot of stuff like animations and particles are ugly in comparison to the pre-rendered stuff but that’s why the pre-rendered it.

But what’s up with all the Halo-ish games representing consoles nowadays? First there was Halo on the X-Box, then there was Gears of War on the X-Box 360, Resistance is currently the PS3’s showcase game which will be replaced by Killzone 2. All of these games take place in a futuristic dystopia with aliens as the bad guys! The only one being original is, of course, Nintendo.

GoW on both Vista as well as XP! From EvilAvatar:

CliffyB let something slip at the Microsoft E3 Briefing. He said that Gears of War would be available this fall for both Vista and XP based systems. But wait Cliffy…GoW uses Games for Windows Live. I thought that was Vista only? Apparently not, as tonight I have confirmed with a representative from Microsoft that that Gears of War PC will indeed be playable on both XP and Vista.

I couldn’t care less as I’m using Vista, but I can imagine this being very good news to 90% of the gaming community that doesn’t have Vista yet.

The sequel of F.E.A.R. has been shown at E3 this year. Really? Well yeah… Sort of.

No cameras. No voice recorders. No interviews. No screenshots released. No questions asked. To say that CVG’s invite to the world’s first showing of the F.E.A.R. sequel beyond the iron walls of Seattle’s Monolith was heavily policed is somewhat of an understatement. With a marriage to Vivendi Games now thoroughly annulled through Monolith’s acquisition by Warner Brothers, and the franchise name of F.E.A.R now lost in frantic lawyer-speak the decision has been clearly been made to let the still unnamed game speak for itself. Which it did: loudly, violently and often with slow-motion swearing.

It begins after the concluding explosion of F.E.A.R. (perhaps ignoring the timeline of Vivendi’s faintly silly Extraction Point expansion pack) with the lead character dropping in and out of consciousness on a hospital operating table. Doctors struggle to revive you one minute, then you drop out of the real world (perhaps) and see shambling bodies gorging on your flesh. Up above, in the operating theatre’s gallery, a shadowy woman calls for ever more extreme efforts to bring you back to the living and slightly dead - defibrillators are brought out, special effects go crazy and you awake an unspecified amount of time later in that now-wrecked hospital (with a frequently recurring decorative blood stain motif) with a painful ringing in your ears.

What then becomes clear is that we’re still playing a F.E.A.R. game - that distinctive boxiness of the corridors remains apparent, while explosion effects and glass shatters easily recall happy days past of slo-mo extreme violence. Do you still play the same character? Well that’s up for debate. You wear the uniform of the Delta Force clones, a military man called Redd Schofield keeps on trying to contact you via radio link and scary psychic-imagination-child Alma still has a keen interest in you - but there’s no definite answer. Certainly no answer when you’re not allowed to ask questions.

Read the full article if you’re interested.

Want to be a GTA IV character? Then proceed here.

An interesting preview of Halo 3 but be careful, it’s filled with spoilers! Skip the following quoted bit of text if you don’t want anything spoiled!

The plot: Here’s what we know. The Covenant is in the midst of a rupturing civil war, pitting Elites and a contingent of Grunts and Hunters against the remaining Brute-led forces. Thusly Elites, while not truly allied with UNSC forces, will share with them a common enemy. Master Chief, as expected, is caught in the middle of the battle and fights to prevent Earth’s total destruction.

The first level: Sierra 117l, the first level of Halo 3 takes place in a lush jungle setting. We only saw one small portion of the level, but in that brief ten minutes of action we saw hovering Pelicans shot out of sky by Covenant gunships. Furious Brutes charged through the level’s thick jungle vegetation (which, in a neat twist, blew and swayed with the wind and passing creatures). Playing on Heroic difficulty offers more enemies and fierce, epic battles never seen before in any Halo game. We also noticed that headshots are more important than ever, particularly on higher difficulties, an observation that Bungie confirmed.

There’s more! More?? MORE!!!

Blizzard working on a third unannounced game!? Oh yes, believe it. My guess: It’s Diablo 3.

Talking to Gamasutra this morning, Frank Pearce, founding memnber and senior vice president of product development for Blizzard revealed that the company has a third team, hard at work on a new title, separate from World of Warcraft and StarCraft II.

The comment came amid discussion of the company’s current workforce. “Our global headcount is 2,700,” said Pearce, “And most of that is customer service for World of Warcraft! In terms of development staff it’s probably around 350. World of Warcraft is about 135 people, 40 for Starcraft II, 40 for team 3, our cinematics team is about 85 guys. Then there’s sound and Q/A and that sort of thing.”

When pressed for details regarding the new project, Pearce was cagey. “Team 3 is working on something really awesome. I can’t give you any hints, but it’s totally awesome.”

From EvilAvatar.

E3 is not done shape shifting yet! Read this article for more information.

As if it were an evolutionary necessity of trade shows, E3 has “evolved” from its roots at the Los Angeles Convention Center to an “event” spread out across Santa Monica, encompassing multiple hotels. The press conferences for Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo were also held in different places. In essence, there were three places you would visit a company: at its press conference, at one of the many hotel meeting suites, or at the Barker Hangar (the location of the open demo kiosks). Trying to cram in all the companies at the different locations was a logistical impossibility; one of the more popular conversations between journalists on hand was who had to be cut and what games could be seen where. One could argue that that this is a bad sign for an event meant to bring the gaming industry and journalists together.

Planning for adequate coverage was a bigger challenge then most expected. Appointments were being missed left and right, and gaming companies began courting walk-ins to see their games. This was partly due to transportation issues; the shuttles could be unreliable, and it seems as though many folks planned meetings back-to-back, not realizing that they could be miles apart.

Nevertheless, the invitation-only nature of the show meant that the game publishers assumed you were someone they should talk to. Even the more ornate lounges, such as Sony’s invitation-only hands-on booth above its open gaming arcade, could be entered with a business card and an existing PR contact. While many will complain about the invitations and the control the ESA now has over who does and does not go to E3, the fact is when you do get to go, you don’t have to fight the masses of people for coverage; your main enemy is time.

As usual, there’s much more. In fact there’s a few pages more so check it out!

GamePolitics’ top 10 biggest scandals of all time. All gaming related of course.

PS3 Launch (2006) - fights, riots, shootings - and we’re not talking about the games - these were the unanticipated features of the PS3 launch, fueled by system shortages and overhyped consumer expectations

Columbine (1999) - when it was revealed that Dylan Harris and Eric Klebold were fans of Doom, the news fueled a firestorm of criticism over game violence that reached the Clinton White House and continues even now.

Resistance: Fall of Man (2007) - When religious leaders at Manchester Cathedral learned that PS3 launch title Resistance: Fall of Man included a level based on the interior of the house of worship they demanded a recall, drawing a dubious linkage between Resistance and local gun violence in Manchester. The story made international headlines and earned criticism from then-Prime Minister Tony Blair and Parliament. Sony issued an apology, but officials still aren’t satisfied.

This is actually pretty funny, so don’t miss it!

GoW will be better looking and more feature rich on PC than it’s X-Box 360 counterpart. The patience of PC gamers must be, and luckily it usually is, rewarded!

New features and content for the multiplayer game will include new multiplayer maps, extra game modes and a brand new level editor. The singleplayer side of things will be bulked up by the addition of five new chapters, one of which reportedly involves fighting a Brumak.

Meanwhile, Mark Rein of Epic has hinted in recent interviews that 360 owners will have to cope without the new content as to include the extra PC content would require a patch significantly larger than all five updates combined that are currently available for the game.

Downloading an update of that size would mean leaving the Xbox on for a long time and, as we all know, leaving a 360 on for too long can be a risky business.

As for the matter of crossplay, referring to the ability for PC players to battle online with Xbox 360 gamers (and promptly trounce them with superior hardware and inputs), Microsoft has confirmed that there will be no such feature in Gears of War and the multiplayer with be only PC to PC or 360 to 360.

They have graciously opened the game to both Vista and XP users however, instead of leaving it up to crackers and hackers to open the compatability for XP for them. Nice of Microsoft to save the community some effort, eh?

Here’s the original article.

BioShock will be better on PC’s as well. More good news for PC gamers.

What does the internet activation entail? Why do you have it?
It’s an anti-piracy measure that we unfortunately have to implement to curb illegal game distribution as best we can. It’s a one time check and then you’re done. How does the DX10 version compare to the 360 graphics? And DX9?
The 360 and DX9 graphics are roughly equivalent. The DX10 graphics add a few additional features and image quality enhancements on top of this.

Will the game run fairly consistently at 30 FPS on the recommended system specs with medium graphical settings?
Definitely, and probably higher.

What kind of frame rates can you expect using an 8600 card and DX10?
Depends on what detail settings you use and what resolution as well as your CPU. Obviously this card will support the game pretty well though, so I would expect at least 30-40 FPS on high detail.

How much will a single-core processor hold you back in playing this game?
A single core processor will reduce your frame rate compared to an equivalently clocked dual core processor. However the game is still perfectly playable on single-core processors using lower detail settings.

Check out the whole article right here.

Far Cry 2 now has a teaser website online. It is a tease, but enough to get the rumors running. The scenario they seem to be aiming for this time around seems original just like the original Far Cry’s scenery. Mind you though that this is not Crytek that is working on Far Cry 2 as they are already busy with Crysis and on top of that they don’t have the rights to use the Far Cry name.

Stranglehold to be short and sandboxy… Huh? It’s all here.

However, the third-person shooter, which is to be released on PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC, may not be the epic we had hope for. In an interview of at Ars Technica, Jason Kaehler said that the game would only be around twelve hours long, which is a little short for a sequel to a film with a thirty minute long shoot-out as a climax.

“From our beta-testing, we anticipate around 12 hours of gameplay; each level is enormous. We are also seeing that due to the sandbox nature of our game design, there are numerous ways to play each level.”

Sandbox, you say? Well, that may make up for it then.

“We have full multiplayer support for 360, PS3, and PC so that means you can continue to play the game again and again in Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch with completely different experiences each time.”

A multiplayer sandbox game then? Awesome to the max, even if players do need to play the games differently to get the most out of the game.

I’ve gotta watch out with that word… ‘here‘. Doh, I did it again.

Sam and Max season 2 will be out this fall for all those who are interested. I tried Sam and Max Episode 1 but it’s not my kinda game although I do appreciate the humor. I used to love point and click adventures, what happened between then and now? Ah yes: True 3D, online games, amazing graphics, cinematic gameplay and the list goes on.

Telltale Games has officially announced the upcoming return of gaming’s deadpan dog and hyper-kinetic rabbity thing, Sam & Max. The uniquely untrained detective duo is back this Fall in a second season of episodic entanglements, playfully putting the kibosh on crime and successfully solving brazenly bizarre, yet intensely intriguing mysteries through the obnoxious overuse of ludicrous lagomorphs and amazingly awful alliteration. Next paragraph!

Looky looky!

Lost the game. The graphics look like shit and I reckon the gameplay can only equal that quality. Licensed games… There’s only one licensed game out there that everyone should try. It’s called Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay.

Meh…

Roger Ebert still refuses to consider games as a form of art! What an idiot. Aren’t games designed in the same way as CG is made in movies? This old man should die… Like right now. I’ve never liked him. I’ve always thought he was the worst thing to happen to the movie industry since the MPAA but now h

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by DangerousDaze You’re talking about what is not art. Clearly child pornography is not art and I don’t need the court of any land to tell me that.

NAMBLA would disagree, which is why courts are necessary as final arbiters in such situations.

 

Quote:

The nationality of the critic in question is not relevant to the discussion.

Yes it is. You made it so, by insulting my reference to our “officious” Supreme Court, which is absolutely appropriate for me to refer to in the context of discussing what is an is not art to an American art critic and, hence, in an American context.

You’re not thinking terribly logically.

There’s more! MORE?!?! MOOOOORE!!!!!!!!! This is getting lame.

Rockstar giving Sony an exclusive franchise. Exclusive? Like GTA exclusive? Hah…

This is Michael Shorrock. I’m the Director of 3rd Party Relations at SCEA. As you may have seen this morning/last night on GameHead with Geoff Keighley, we are announcing that a new franchise from Rockstar Games will be exclusive to PS3. As part of our long standing relationship with Rockstar, and the incredible success for both companies with the cultural icon that is Grand Theft Auto, we’ve agreed to the PlayStation exclusive rights of the next great franchise from the Rockstar studios.

Everyone knows to have success in this business you need to look ahead, identifying the talent and titles that are going to give consumers new kinds of gaming experiences that help set the bar for the rest of the industry. Rockstar has a heritage for doing just that. We have had incredible success with the GTA franchise and are happy to continue to offer those titles on our platforms, and even more excited about what’s to come from the current and future relationship between our companies. Rockstar really wanted to make a game that you can truly only do on PS3, harnessing the power of CELL and Blu-ray disc and this deal lets them do just that.. This is really a win-win situation for both companies. As Jack mentioned in the interview with Geoff, this franchise is not LA Noire, but something all new. We agreed with Rockstar and Take-Two Interactive Software that we wouldn’t disclose anything more about the deal or title at this time, so stay tuned, we’ll share more info as soon as we can.

Hah…

Cyborg-like memory? Oooh boy! This looks interesting. I can’t wait to get me a cyborg from the local mall and teach it how to say: “I’ll be back.”. That would be cool for about 2 minutes before becoming very obvious.

Tel Aviv (Israel) – Two scientists from the Tel-Aviv University have shown that information can be stored in live neurons. The research results provide a new way to help understand how our brain learns and store information, but also indicate that a “cyborg-like integration of living material into memory chips” could become a reality in the foreseeable future.

The full article is filled with all the details. Bring on the dystopian future that inevitably awaits us all once the machines turn on us! We’re DOOMED!!

The world’s first “holographic” human body. It’s interesting to see that all that Star Trek crap from the ’60s is now being realized by scientists. Those Japanese are also progressing a bit further with real holograms every year or so, and that’s all nice and everything but… Where are the fucking spaceships?!

The 4D human atlas is built upon data from basic anatomy textbooks. Fundamental body systems and organs were rendered into animated drawings by a graphic artist, and converted into Java 3DTM to bring them to life in the CAVE environment. “CAVEman is designed to look like a real human, but can also be sized to any scale we want,” says Sensen. “We can display all or only a few select components of the model at any given time.”

CAVEman is designed to help medical researchers investigate the genetics of various diseases, and new approaches to targeted treatments. “This technology is a powerful tool for my research into how genetic mutations lead to developmental problems such as cleft lip and palate,” says Benedikt Hallgrimsson, PhD, associate professor of cell biology and anatomy, U of C’s Faculty of Medicine. “As the technology grows, it will be useful for diverse studies of growth and development, both for creating predictive models and also for complex visualization.”

There’s a little more to the story but this is basically it. So what does this mean? Better and faster research in medical science? Can I expect a Ghost in the Shell-type of cyborg body to transfer my brain into anytime soon? No? Then what’s the point…

Blu-Ray player now cheaper than PS3. The cheapest BR player is now being sold at 500 Dollars. But it’s still more expensive than a 400 Dollar HD-DVD player!

Sony, who once touted the PS3 as the cheapest Blu-ray player on the market, has appeared to have crossed off its own talking point. But if priced the same, the BDP-S300 would be a tough sale against the game console, whose only apparent benefit is quieter hardware.

Way to go Sony! No seriously, you guys suck. Read the full article here.

PSP being overclocked by firmware?! Even though there was home brew modified firmware for the PSP for some time that overclocked the PSP’s CPU, now an official firmware update will do the same! I was actually surprised that Sony did this since I had never heard of any console manufacturer doing something like this before. Pretty smart though, touché Sony.

The new PSP firmware slaps some “go faster” stripes on the little handheld, bumping its processor up 50 percent from a wimpy 222MHz to 333MHz. That’s right - no new hardware required. The PSP actually has always run on a bit of an underclocked processor, presumably to aid in battery life until some extra horsepower was needed.

Now, game developers will be able to flag their software for faster speeds if necessary. The bump won’t be noticeable in older games, as they have all been programmed on and will run at 222MHz. Instead, developers will be required to tell the device whether to step up its speeds - the firmware just unlocks the potential. This way, older games don’t act buggy or accelerated without intent.

As usual, here’s the full article.

Nextgen computing. Quantum computing is the new buzz word everyone seems to be talking about lately. Here’s an interesting article to help you understand just why this is such an interesting new development.

In the race to make computers more powerful, magnets may be out and lasers may be in. Ultra-rapid pulses of polarized light fired from lasers, new tests show, can outperform conventional magnetic data writers by as much as two orders of magnitude. The technology could form the foundation of a new generation of computers that link lasers to their hard drives.

Long gone are the days when computers were required only to make mathematical calculations. Even modest desktop models are now expected to handle streaming audio and video from multiple Web sites simultaneously, for example. Those functions require huge amounts of data to be transferred quickly to and from the hard drive. But current data-processing systems, which use magnets to write and read the binary code that constitutes computer language, can only work so fast. Some users’ needs have begun to bump up against the limitations of this technology. If computers are to become faster, they’ll require a different data-transfer system, and the awesome promise of quantum computing remains years away.

So that means we’ll get computers that are literally two times as fast as current computers, which will inevitably result in cheaper rendering of stuff as well as photo realistic games. Considering the fact that Crysis is pretty much borderline photo realism on the current gen of hardware one can only imagine what could be possible once computing power is doubled! Check it out!

The Phantom returns… No-freaking-way!

Phantom(R)
Entertainment, Inc. (OTC Pink Sheets: PHEI) announced today that it has
signed a $1.3 million loan agreement with European Investors LINLEY
Management S.A.

“This operating loan gives the Company immediate funding to manufacture
the Phantom(R) Wireless Lapboard and to launch marketing and sales in the
Fourth Quarter of this year,” noted Greg Koler, Phantom Entertainment’s CEO
and President. “This funding will allow the Company to manufacture product
lines this year with our partners Alienware and IONE Technologies.”
“The Company will pursue other applications for the Phantom Lapboard
including new digital media centers being developed by companies like Intel
and Gateway,” Koler said. “We are currently working with distributors, VAR
resellers and e-tailers in the U.S, Europe and Asia to initiate marketing,
sales and distribution of the Phantom Lapboard.”

“Phantom Entertainment is an attractive investment for digital media
investors in new consumer products and services,” explained a spokesperson
of European Investors LINLEY Management S.A. “Our funding is based on the Company’s success in securing a licensing agreement with Ione Technology
Inc. to manufacture and distribute the Phantom Wireless Lapboard and
Phantom Wireless Laser Mouse under Ione’s brand name throughout Asia and the Company’s agreement to manufacture the Phantom Wireless Lapboard for Alienware’s Media Centers,” the spokesperson of LINLEY Management said.

Under terms of the financing, the Company will receive a $1,300,000
operating loan immediately to support manufacturing, marketing, sales and
distribution of the Phantom(R) Wireless Lapboard and Phantom(R) Wireless
Mouse in the U.S. Europe and Asia.

This story has been going on for many years now and so many millions have been lost to this project with people basically just running off with money from their investors and all kinds of crap. I can’t believe people are still even considering throwing their money into this… Vaporware project. Why would you do such a thing? How many times will histoy have to repeat itself before people realize this is a lost cause? You rich people; are fucking idiots.

HD-DVD still winning the European market! Yay! I’ve always been in favor of HD-DVD since they’re way cheaper than Blu-Ray stuff. And it would seem the Europeans know this and they are in favor of HD-DVD over Blu-Ray!

FRANKFURT - HD DVD video players have outsold rival standard Blu-ray players by a three-to-one margin in Europe’s main markets so far this year, according to a lobby group.

The European HD DVD Promotional Group claimed it had 74 percent market share in Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Switzerland for stand-alone players, citing sales figures it commissioned from market research group GfK.

…

The figures were for stand-alone players only and did not include sales of games consoles such as Sony Corp.’s PlayStation 3, which contains a Blu-ray player.

The Sony-led Blu-ray lobby group includes Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., Apple Inc. and Dell Inc. Its discs, which are outselling HD DVD discs, can store more information and special features but the technology is more expensive.

Toshiba cut prices for its HD-E1 HD DVD player to $549 in Europe and $299 in the United States last month.

Sony’s BDP-S300 Blu-ray player costs $499 in the United States, and its BDP-S1E European version has recently gone on sale, with prices starting at around 900 euros. Other Blu-ray players have been on sale in Europe for longer.

Sony has a history of failed mediums with UMD being among the most recent one’s. Sony, just give it up! We don’t want your expensive license-only formats when there’s too many better alternatives! Article from EvilAvatar. Oh and just in case you think that this 3 to 1 ration can somehow be lessened by the fact that the PS3 sales were not included in the statistics, don’t. The PS3 sold like shit, so even if they did include the PS3 it’d still be 3 to 1 or at the very least 2 to 1. But then… Considering a recent study showing that most people who own a console don’t even know it can play movies… Nope, it’s still 3 to 1.

A 40 GB PS3 with no backward-compatibility? Well at this point Sony should do stuff like this. The PS3 is too expensive and since they really need to recover as much as possible of everything they have and are still losing in terms of money I think this rumor could very well be true.

According [to] Game Informer magazine, a $399 40gig PS3 system is on the way, but it will have no backwards compatibility. They actually expected to hear the announcement at E3 on it. So they may have just heard different rumblings altogether.

True, the article is out-dated but the rumor is pretty old. It only resurfaced recently and I wouldn’t mind making a bet on this.

The iPhone has been hacked. Already?! Well it was bound to happen sooner or later. I guess the short amount of time it took ‘em to get this done means that Apple pulled one of those: “Woops we forgot to patch a few security leaks! Now more people will buy our product because they can hack it and use it in a way they wouldn’t have been able to to if we had patched it up.” .

Holy cow. Those guys at fusion.osx86.hu/#iphone are geniuses. Late yesterday, I downloaded a copy of iASign, their new iPhone activation tool. Right now, at this second, my iPhone just made its first call using the SIM from my disposable Cingular phone with its $10 card. After, I dialed *777# and it told me I’ve got $9.25 left on my account. The phone number in Settings -> Phone shows the proper number for the disposable phone (versus the one I activated with the iPhone PickYourPlan).

Getting this to happen was neither intuitively obvious or completely without roadblocks. To make this happen, I had to put together some basic information including my iPhone’s IMEI, the SIM number for the disposable phone, and my Macintosh’s private key information. All the steps on how to do this have been put together in an easy-to-follow tutorial over at HackTheiPhone.com.

So what does this mean? It means you can buy an iPhone and activate it using a disposable Cingular SIM. It does not mean that the iPhone has been unlocked in general, but given this step forward, do we really care? I’m still investigating what it will take to add data to the iPhone and whether you can roam internationally. Just to be clear, text messaging does work and only costs $0.05 both to send and receive (shown here), a nice savings compared to the $0.15 I’m paying using the normal iPhone service.

This made the iPhone a better deal in my opinion. Not only do you get an iPod and a mobile phone in one, you also get to pay acceptable prices for it too!! Check out the article over here with a step-by-step tutorial on how to accomplish this.

The new Windows (Windows Vienna) will make heavy use of web-based applications! A good thing or a bad thing?

In addition to making available its existing services, such as mail and instant messaging, Microsoft also will create core infrastructure services, such as storage and alerts, that developers can build on top of. It’s a set of capabilities that have been referred to as a “Cloud OS,” though it’s not a term Microsoft likes to use publicly.

“Cloud-centric is probably a better way to say it because Cloud OS makes it sound like it is only running on the cloud,” said Brian Hall, general manager of Windows Live. “A lot of the data, a lot of the apps, a lot of the interesting things are on the edge. They are on the PCs. They are on the Xboxes. They are on the phones.”

But, quibbles over nomenclature aside, Microsoft made clear this week that it aims to play the same role on the Internet that it plays today on the desktop–that of providing its own applications as well as the underlying plumbing and tools that developers use to build their products.

My only question is: Why? I mean, what can we get from such an OS that we can not get from a traditional OS? Click here for the full story.

An interesting article on in-game physics and the PhysX card. An interesting read for any gamer.

It’s fair to say that the PhysX card developed by Ageia has been a controversial new product for the geek and hardware enthusiast community ever since its introduction. It’s a fairly simple idea at its base level; a piece of hardware dedicated only to processing physics so that the graphics card and processor don’t get bogged down by the calculations, but it’s one which has struggled to catch on in quite the same way as other hardware devices.

Designed for games which use complex physics, a trend spurred on massively by the fantastic Physics Gun in Half-Life 2, the company has faced an uphill battle with consumers as it tries to persuade gamers that they must invest in a new, additional piece of kit in order to get the most out of their game.

So, why has the market not chosen to fully embrace the PhysX card and what has Ageia been doing to help persuade those gamers and geeks who are still sceptical about the potential of an Ageia PPU? It’s a question which has been burning at the back of our minds lately and, with Unreal Tournament 3 set for release later this year and Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 just seeing a release on PC, it seemed like an ideal time to have a chat with Ageia and find out just what it has been up to lately.

I went along to have a chat with Ageia’s Michael Steele and Daniel Forster, to catch-up with Ageia and to see what the PhysX PPU may hold in store for gamers in the future. Check out the story within…

Click here for the full article.

Penny Arcade comics are now available on Steam! I’m more of a Ctrl+Alt+Del guy, but there’s plenty of PA fans out there to make this news worthy.

Viewable in all Steam accounts (no purchase required), a brand new installment of Penny Arcade will be posted every other day, providing a thrice-weekly dose of one of today’s most popular Webcomics to over 13 million around the world.

Click here to check it out. (Steam is required!)

Jack Thompson finally payed the shrink a visit. Or rather, he was forced to do so. Not too surprising actually since this is the man that said The Sims 2 was pornography.

As GP has previously reported, Thompson is currently embroiled in a pair of federal lawsuits against the Bar (see Florida Bar Gives Jack Thompson a Wedgie Over Bully Case). The Bar has moved to hold a disciplinary hearing against Thompson based on several complaints about the anti-game attorney’s professional conduct, including video game cases involving Grand Theft Auto and Bully. A scheduled June 25th hearing was postponed. Meanwhile, mediation talks have taken place between Thompson and the Bar.

There’s more to the story for those who are interested!

Google strengthens it’s security by acquiring yet another company!

Google acquired Postini for a mere $625m, according to the announcement. The security firm will now become a subsidiary of Google, rather than disappear altogether. And though its particular business segment makes a nice fit in Google’s framework to begin with, the company is already looking toward the future.

It appears that Postini wasn’t acquired simply for its large client book of big companies, but more for what services it can offer Google’s already-existing applications. The security features behind Google Desktop and many of its online applications aren’t as tight as some companies would like, causing them to instead shy away to full Microsoft Exchange server setups. Though these are very costly, they provide arguably better security (assuming you don’t look at the patch list each week.).

Google will probably continue to buy companies until all that is left to buy is the competition! Check out the full story here.

Undercover shoppers wanted! Some statistics companies is looking for kids to volunteer for what appears to be one of the most rediculous things ever. They want kids to go and buy M rated games. That way they can see just how compliant stores and store clerks are to the ratings given to games. Meh.

Together we can keep M-rated video games out of kids’ hands… your participation helps us hold the retail industry accountable for selling sex and violence to kids!

It’s not like the kids didn’t play M rated games already… Once again: Meh.

Gaming tournaments on TV. Only a few years away? Noooo!! I love games and gaming altogether but watching other people play is just boring as hell. It’s like watching any other sport on TV. It’s fun to play but it’s just plain boring to watch.

Tournament.com is a service which allows videogames players to compete in online tournaments for money. Asked specifically about his views on game tournaments being televised, Skelhorn admitted that gaming is a difficult sport to watch on TV “because of the nature of it”, but says that “produced properly I think it is definitely something that can work.”

He told CVG, “It is certainly something I would like to see become successful because mass media like television would really help e-gaming become a mainstream sport.”

Read more here.