Gears of War 3 Details Released (By Accident) April 9, 2010

After the major cliffhanger that ended Gears of War 2, many considered a third game to be all but certain, espessially given the millions of copies sold of both games of the platform.  Then take into account how many years have passed since the last release, and many were considering that Gears of War 3 might just come out by the end of this year.

Well it’s not.  It is however coming early next year.  This morning, Xbox Live posted up that Gears of War 3 will be released in April 2011, one year from now.  The post has since been removed, as it was likely posted by accident.  CliffyB was supposed to go on national telivision on Monday to premere “something” but then delayed his appearance to further polish what they were planning to show.

However, please be aware this is not official.  Microsoft’s Xbox Live news channels have never been frauded in this way so it’s unlikely this was some kind of hack.  It was likely something intended to be time delayed to coinside with the show reveal, and when the reveal didn’t happen, someone probably didn’t reset the reveal’s timer.

F.E.A.R. 3 Announced! April 9, 2010

Back in 2005, I was a huge fan of what Monolith Productions was working on.  They had first grabbed my attention with the ahead of its time (perhaps a bit TOO ahead of it’s time) Sanity: Aiken’s Artifact, which while got some great reviews and was the first game I can think of that was using the DLC payment model, it was a commercial failure and was quickly forgotten for the next game Monolith released, No One Lives Forever.

No One Lives Forever was a commercial and critical tour de force that I enjoyed tremendously.  A sequel and an expansion pack was released for the game, but after the expansion pack Monolith turned all efforts to this new PC franchise they were creating, First Encounter Assault Recon, or F.E.A.R.  That first F.E.A.R. game revolutionized first person shooters, had incredible artificial intelligence, and could show that an action game could truely be scary.

The second F.E.A.R. game, which was cross platform, was a solid game, but not the major seller of the first.

Monolith is out, replaced by Day One Studios.  John Carpenter, famous for directing such cult films as “Escape from New York” and “The Thing” is going to serve as a project consultant.  If The Spoony One has anything to say about that, espessially after the terrible “The Thing” PC/Xbox game, he might have a problem, espessially if he has to dust off his fuse box counter.

This game is going to focus on branching cooperative play, something the first games never featured.  There will be multiple protagonists with differing stories, and that alone sounds pretty interesting.  F.E.A.R. 2 really brought nothing new to the game’s formula other than slightly better graphics and widescreen support (something F.E.A.R. 1 didn’t have at launch).

I’m looking foward to it, this is going to give me an excuse to finally play through my copy of F.E.A.R. 2.

iPhone OS 4.0 Announced, Multitasking Confirmed, No New Phone April 8, 2010

Apple announced today that their new operating system for the iPhone and iPad would be a radical upgrade from their current versions.  The chief component of the upgrade is going to be the much requested multitasking feature, a feature that other phones such as the Palm Pre touted as their way to stay ahead of Apple when they debued their phones.  The feature has been implemented with battery life in mind, and the coding path to implement it is apparently very easy for private developers to update their programs with.

Also fans of Achievements (yes, those of you who own Xbox 360s) will be happy to know that iPhone OS 4.0 will have upgraded gaming support with a whole new gaming platform, and in game achievement support cross platform.  Many developers have launched competing cross program game achievement platforms, this probably will make them obsolite.  Its nice Apple has implemented this feature, although the timing could have something to do with the fact Windows Mobile 7 will support the Xbox 360 achievement platform with it’s own games.

What wasn’t announced today was something a lot of people were expecting, a new iPhone.  With every OS release announcment Apple has predictably released a new phone along with it with the OS in mind, not today.  A fourth generation iPhone has been rumored since the iPad’s launch, and the last rumors I heard involved a 940×480 resolution screen and a slightly slower iPad processor, but nothing of the sort was announced today, making credibility of those rumors plummet.  Also, rumors of these phones being provided by providers other than AT&T in the US was also not addressed, further plummeting the credibility of those as well.

iPhone OS 4.0 will come to the iPhone 3G and 3GS in the summer and iPad in the fall.  You’d think after this major press announcement they would have a more solid release date.

Alan Wake Has Gone Gold! April 7, 2010

Remedy has announced today that the game that I’ve been waiting five years for has been completed.  Alan Wake, is done.

This is quite an important day for me actually.  I remember being one of the first people to interview Remedy for my old site, The Deep Six, back when the game was announced prior E3 2005, the first E3 I was not allowed to attend.  After that E3, Remedy was on a PR whirlwind doing promotion for the game.  It was at the time coming to PC, Xbox 360 and PS3, the later two not yet released and the former nowhere near as powerful as it needed to be at the time to handle this game.  In fact I specifically remember a question I asked Remedy if they would be targeting next generation PCs since they were targeting next generation consoles.  They didn’t know at the time, but I turned out to be right about that as the game was eventually demoed on Multi-Core Intel CPUs running Nvidia Directx 10 Graphics.  It would’ve taken a PC that powerful to run Alan Wake no doubt, and the extra development time would be quite expensive to have kept going with a PC version (to say nothing of the fact that it would’ve been exclusive to Windows Vista and Windows 7, and we all know how badly games exclusive to those platforms sold).

Congrats to Remedy for putting the wrapper on this fantastic game release.  Alan Wake will be released exclusively in the US on May 18th, 2010 on the Xbox 360.

Here’s a teaser Remedy released on April 1st for Alan Wake Wars.   I couldn’t stop laughing when I saw this either, the guys at Remedy have a great sense of humor.

Mirror’s Edge iPhone Released…on iPad? April 4, 2010

Well I’m a bit dissapointed this morning.  I was following some news about what were the best games for the newly released iPad, and ironically enough the game to top that list was Mirror’s Edge.  So I of course checked my iPhone’s app store to download the iPhone version (or multi platform version) only to find it wasn’t there.

Looks like us iPhone owners who have waited since December for this game will have to wait a bit longer for the iPhone version, while the iPad owners (the three of you there are) who weren’t expecting this release at all will have one great game to play on their shiny new iPads.  Hopefully this is a sign that the iPhone version will be released soon, since other than the alternate resolutions the gameplay of both versions seem to be identical.  I’m just suprised this is how they announce the game was going to be cross platform, no iPad version was announced, unlike the iPhone version which has been anticipated since December of last year.

Maybe this is the reason the game was delayed three months, it was originally supposed to be out in January.

Apple Releases iPad Today! April 3, 2010

It’s April 3rd, and you know what that means.  The WiFi only versions of the Apple iPad are officially released.  Currently the iPad comes in 16GB, 32GB and 64GB versions, and start at $500 US.  Currently, Apple Retail Stores will probably not have any in inventory as they were likely sold out to preorders last month.  However, Best Buy is expected to have some on the shelves today, so if you really want one, don’t botther with the Apple store, go to Best Buy.

A 3G model of the iPad is expected for later this month.

Believe Nothing You Read Today! April 1, 2010

It’s April 1st, 2010 today, and I’m here to tell you that the news is useless.  All news you expect to read today will probably be a complete lie, don’t even bother reading it.

New Alan Wake Footage Online! March 30, 2010

Remedy has posted on their twitter feed a link to a new scene in Alan Wake.

This is some of the funniest stuff I’ve ever seen in a video game.  They’re really breaking the fourth wall with this one.

Since I can only embed YouTube files here, here’s the shorter YouTube version.  You can check out the full version of the video on their Facebook site.

Alan Wake is coming exclusively to the Xbox 360 on May 18th, 2010.  Special thanks to GamerGoddess for bringing this to my attention!

Nvidia Releases Most Powerful Graphics Cards on the Planet, Sold Out Everywhere March 27, 2010

Last night Nvidia finally released their Geforce 480 and Geforce 470 graphics cards to the world.  These cards are Nvidia’s flagship Directx 11 cards based upon their Fermi graphics processors and currently both outperform all other graphics cards currently avalible.  The hardware is the first major revision that Nvidia has done in several years, and it is a few years coming.  Up until this point, Nvidia has only released Directx 10 cards since their powerful 8 series.

I, being a person who has one of those 8 series cards, have waited years for this release.  A check of Newegg this afternoon showed all 470 and 480 cards by all manufacterers to be completely sold out, apparently I wasn’t the only one waiting, but unlike the others waiting, they had the money up front.  I haven’t seen a rush to buy graphics cards since the 6800 Ultra was released, but then again it’s been a long while since such a clear cut powerful card has been released to the PC Gaming enthusiasts.