In a recent IGN interview with actor John Dimaggio who voiced the grizzled COG Marcus Fenix, information on what to expect was leaked albeit limited. What John had to say was that the Brumacks would be a featured enemy in the game. He also stated that there will be new allies to meet, tougher enemies and a slew of new weapons will be featured and I can personally say that is an exciting prospect since the weapons already in the first game were pretty sweet. Other then that not too much more information has been released as of now.

While it is cool that the Brumacks will be in this game, the fact is the Brumack was also featured in the recent PC release of Gears of War so fighting one isn’t exactly a new experience if you have played the PC version, but we must have faith because EPIC did not disappoint with the original and it can only be a fan boys wet dream to figure out what kind of obstacles Marcus will face in the next installment

Believe it or not but a brand spanking new NES game has been released after over a decade thanks to Retrozone. the game in question is Airball which was ported to multiple computer systems back in 1987. The NES version was in the works at the time but was canceled however, Tengen’s lost game has been found and for the first time is being offered for sale at about $35 with full color manual, brand new parts and some legacy style packaging making this one hell of a piece of work for a mere homebrew production.

A commercial with in game footage can be found on Youtube and I can tell you, the game is impressive from the looks of it, this Editor may have to pick up a copy!

Thanksgiving’s over, and you know what that means: Christmas has started! Well, it feels that way, anyway… it’s a bit odd how much power Big Marketing has over the seasons.

Regardless, it’s never too early to start being awesome. This year’s Child’s Play has begun! For those who don’t know (and really, for shame) Child’s play is a Charity started by those fabulous Penny Arcade gents back in 2003.

In short, several hospital across several countries have wish lists set up through Amazon.com. You, the awesome gamer, by a game or toy from this list, and then, through the magic of post, is whisked to the hospital you chose, where it is then available for the children. In general, games and systems are available for use by everyone, whereas toys are often given to a child to keep. How awesome? So awesome!

So please, if you can, do your part! Let’s show God and karma and Jack Thompson what we’re really made of!

A recent small press conference held by Microsoft of Japan has leaked the details of the upcoming Fall Update thanks to a member of Engadget Japan.

Some of the features and changes this update will include are:

• Reorganization of the Games Blade to include “Game Library” replacing Xbox Live Arcade.
• Within the Games Library: A new menu with filters broken down into “All Games”, “Arcade”, “Demos”, and “Recent Downloads.”
• Marketplace now sorted into 4 Categories: “Featured Content”, “What’s New” “Game Store”, and “Video Store.”
• An expanded personal profile including a text field of up to 500 - 1000 characters allowing users to include more information about themselves including name, nationality, region and an introductory statement.
• Trials will no longer appear on Gamer Cards nor show up under previous played games.
• and of course the introduction of Friends of Friends

From the looks of these feature, we may be able to better organize our Arcade spaces with settings to filter out demos from full games. Also I can see the demos being removed as a nice touch as now we can see what games our friends actually own instead of wondering whether it’s just the trial version. As for Friends of Friends? It doesn’t seem all that useful but you never know, It’s uncertain whether the features given out by Microsoft of Japan will differ from what North American gamers will get when the update is released, so we should wait and see how it all works out when the Fall Update is released this December 4th.

[Via Joystiq]

Apparently the good folks over at IBM have patented a method in which movie rentals can be made cheaper by inserting 2-3 unskippable commercials into the disc. Now.. inform me if I’m wrong but isn’t the reason for buying or renting movies at home to watch them uninterrupted? So for a buck or two less you can have your movie but be subjected to interruptions by advertisements for products we could care less about. It stinks, I think it’s terrible idea as I myself find myself wanted to chew on glass trying to watch a movie on Sci-Fi channel where they show the same 4 commercials over and over again, sometimes more time is spent on commercials then the film they heavily edited. Fun stuff, particularly if the “fine” people who make Extenze or Girls Gone Wild get on the bandwagon… I think I’ll stick with paying $3.99 for an uninterrupted movie experience. Lets just hope this is entirely optional and not forced down our throats.

[Via Ars Technica]

Yes you heard me! The Messenger Kit with the slick new keyboard attachment is slated to be released on the 4th of this month. The device itself as we all know having seen official images attaches to the bottom of the controller, how does this effect headset connectivity? Well.. unfortunately you can not use your standard headset with it BUT the device comes with a new compatible headset that has the volume and mute functions on the cord. I know I’ll be getting one when they hit the shelves.

Gear Live got the opportunity to get their hands on a pre-release and has posted a nice gallery of the whole package. Check it out!

2K Boston / 2K Australia (formerly Irrational games) has finally released the epic game Bioshock, the Ayn Rand inspired vision of the 60s that takes place in a decaying underwater city.  It’s truly an amazing experience, and will get a proper review once I’ve completed the story.

But shortly after the release, postings were made to various message boards stating that the widescreen version of the game was missing parts of the screen that were visible when playing in normal 4:3 resolutions.  This problem appears in both the PC and 360 versions of the game.  A lengthy discussion erupted, soon turning into a troll flame festival, but the fact is, you see more running in a 4:3 screen than you do on a widescreen tv/monitor.  And that is not what people expect.  Some folks devised a fix for the PC version to enable the field of vision to extend out further on the Widescreen version on PC, but nothing can be done at this time to adjust the 360 version (apart from running it in 480p, which defeats the purpose of having an HDTV).

2K Games responded earlier today that everything is as  they intended.  They are saying that the game was designed with the Widescreen gamer in mind, and that the 4:3 folks have the same horizontal fov (side to side) as the widescreen people, but simply have more vertical vision.

“Instead of cropping the FOV for 4:3 displays and making all 4:3 owners mad in doing so, we slightly extended the vertical FOV for standard def mode: we never wanted to have black bars on people’s displays. (This way, everybody is happy…) This does mean that people playing on a standard def display see slightly more vertical space, but, this does not significantly affect the game-play experience and, we felt that it best served our goal of keeping the game experience as close as possible to the original design and art vision on both types of displays. Reports of the widescreen FOV being a crop of the 4:3 FOV are completely false.”

Ok, so they say the widescreen version is not a crop of the 4:3.  They say it’s just that the 4:3 version has more than the widescreen.  2K… Regardless of how you term it, it means the exact same thing!  They will likely release a patch enabling a different FOV for 360 users, especially with some users reportedly getting very motion sick.

Two news updates for you. It’s been announced that next iteration of the US Army funded game/propaganda machine America’s Army will be an Xbox 360 exclusive title called: “America’s Army: True Soldiers”. I just hope they don’t trick all of us by putting an achievement in there “enlist in the Army”.

In other news, Microsoft and Bungie have announced that first-party controllers and headsets branded with Halo 3 graphics designed by Todd McFarlane (the guy who brought you Spawn) will be available in September, with each of them setting you back $60.

According to Destructoid the newest patch to fix the Whammy Bar problem on the controllers might cause irrecoverable errors to the 360’s OS.  Anyone who hasn’t downloaded this update may want to hold off for now, as the only solution to this problem is to send for the infamous 360 “coffin” and thats no fun.

Seems to be bad times for fans of Red Octanes music game, one problem after another.  But going from a broken feature to a busted system? Not a fair trade off.

With the new Dashboard Update that promises to make many new features available to the consumer, Engadget has reported that the video player will also receive some new codecs.  The 360’s media player will now support streaming of MPEG-4 up to 8Mbps, H.264 up to 15Mbps, and PlaysForSure WMV videos without having to record it through Windows Media Center or the horrid conversion software bundled with Zune. I know I’m excited for some 1st party support for more video formats.

[I've been having great results with Orb, but being able to stream xvid directly without conversion would be great!  Microsoft did this first by enabling AAC playback, hopefully Divx/XviD is fully supported! -Ed]