Hi-Rez Studios excites older gamers with Tribes: Ascend announcement

Most older PC gamers worth their salt will have some fond memories of Tribes multiplayer sessions back in the day. Hi-Rez Studios has now released their first teaser for their upcoming entry in the series:


Here's what Hi-Rez's Todd Harris had to say about it: “Before Halo, before Modern Warfare, and before Battlefield, there was Tribes. Tribes fans appreciate the game’s essence–athletic FPS combat combined with teamwork and strategy. As we began development of Tribes Universe, we focused first on capturing that essence–refining and modernizing iconic elements like jetpacks, skiing, and vehicles. We’ve had tremendous fun play-testing and realized the potential of a multiplayer focused title ahead of Tribes Universe. The community has been waiting for a multi-player shooter that is the modern successor to T2. Tribes: Ascend is that game.”

It's actually kind of funny when you compare the console giant Halo series to Tribes.
One of Halo 1's big features was vehicle multiplayer combat, oh wait, Tribes had that years previous. Halo: Reach "brought to the table" jet-pack mayhem, what, Tribes had already mastered that too? Aw Shazbot!

No release date has been announced yet, other than simply "2011".

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Crytek Showcases CryEngine 3's Next-Gen Capabilities

Not to be outdone by Epic's Unreal Engine 3 demo this year at GDC 2011, Crytek showed off some gorgeous footage of what CryEngine3 can do. Their video is geared a little more towards developers than the UE3 one was, but that doesn't make the effects they show off any less impressive. Enjoy more amazing graphics that current-gen consoles could only dream of being able to give you.


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Medal of Honor "Leave a Message" trailer

EA looks to be bringing back the Medal of Honor series in a big way. And with all the recent drama with the Modern Warfare series it looks like a great time to re-introduce a solid war-series. Instead of most FPS war game trailers, this one chooses to focus more on the human side of war instead of throwing as many explosions and fast-cuts as possible at your. Consider us impressed EA, keep it up.

Medal of Honor will ship October 12, 2010.
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Call of Duty : Black Ops Premier Trailer

So the drama at Infinity Ward may still be in high gear, but that will only have an effect on the next, next, Call of Duty. This years installment is Treyarch's turn, and now we've finally got the debut trailer for their upcoming Call of Duty: Black Ops. From the looks of it, we're still in modern times, and Black Ops is a cool name that would work for future installments similar to how Modern Warfare worked for the series too. At least a name is one less thing Treyarch would have to worry about in 2012, CoD: BO2 writes itself.

From the trailer it looks like the release date is set for either September 11th or November 9th, 2010.
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Left 4 Dead 2 : The Passing released

As previously posted, the first content update for Left 4 Dead 2 is now available for both the PC and Xbox 360.

Here's a little teaser video from Valve starring Francis and Rochelle:



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Stacraft characters invade the real world

Starcraft 2 news is all the rage lately. The beta is already doing it's thing, and the first installment of the game is due to be released this summer. Now we have these Korean Air commercials:

Protoss:


Terran:


Zerg:



At first it was assumed that these were commercials for Starcraft 2. And the date seen in a few of the ending frames was possibly the release date for SC2. Well, sorry to burst your bubble, but that's not what the commercials are for. They are actually advertising the date of the upcoming Ongamenet Starleague (OSL) tournament. It's one of the most popular e-sport events in South Korea (where Starcraft could be mistaken as a religion).

Either way, the commercials are undeniably cool, and we can only hope that when Blizzard actually does decide to release SC2 that we can get some equally as cool advertisements to go along with it.




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Splatterhouse shows it's classy side

The newest trailer released for Namco's upcoming update to the Splatterhouse series starts off as a little departure from what most of the previous trailers have shown. Showing slow motion, acrobatic moves performed by the games protaganist, Rick. Don't worry gore fans, the last 20 seconds or so show off the brutal mayhem you're expecting from the game.

Splatterhouse is tentatively set for an Autumn 2010 release for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3.






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Gears of War 3 "Ashes to Ashes" trailer

Last night on the Jimmy Fallon Show, Gears of War producer Cliff Bleszinski debuted the first trailer for the upcoming Gears of War 3. During the interview Cliff didn't talk much about GoW3, it was more just about his start in video games. After the clip played he said to look for it 'around April 8th 2011'.

** Update: Joystiq is reporting that the release date is set for April 5th, 2011.




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Crysis 2 Reveal

The first Crysis game is still able to cause havoc on even the latest PC hardware, over 2 years after it's release. Crysis 2 was built from the ground up with console support in mind, so it's finally going to give PS3 / Xbox 360 gamers a taste of what all the hype was about. Crytek says the new engine will keep the game running at a constant 30fps on the consoles, but capable PC's will still be able to turn the sliders all the way up and punish their PC's if they desire.

Either way the new trailer for the game is outstanding. Just like the old "Mad World" Gears of War trailer, the mixture of carnage with soft tempo music is a great combination.

Crysis 2 is set to release holiday 2010.





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Panasonic announces launch details for 3D plasmas

3D was all the rage at CES 2010, but now we get to start getting announcements on when these products will actually hit store shelves along with pricing. Panasonic has announced that their 54-inch P54VT2 and 50-inch P50VT2 will be hitting Japanese shelves on April 23rd. The 54" will be approximately $5,932 and the 50" will ring up at around $4,813. Steep pricing indeed, but the sets will come with the ridiculous 5,000,000:1 native contrast ratio and a pair of the active shutter glasses to make the 3D viewing possible.

No mention yet as to when US consumers will be able to get their hands on some 3D Panny action, but with DirecTV launching their 3D capability in June and 3D Blu-Ray's also coming this summer, you can bet it won't be to far behind.

Hit up the source link for more pictures of the sets, GUI's and glasses.

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Netflix looking to add 5.1 audio to Watch Instantly this year

CNET is reporting that in Netflix's 2010 development road map they are looking to add both 5.1 audio streams and closed captioning to it's streaming HD videos later this year. Earlier in the day claims of also adding 1080p were reported, but Netflix has since reclaimed that statement, simply saying that 1080p is not in the books for this year.

Adding 5.1 to Watch Instantly is definitely enough to get this blogger to start using the service again, the next problem is content. Currently only about 6% of the current offerings stream in HD, will 5.1 audio take just as long to trickle down to the flicks you want to see?

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Nexus One Testing

This video shows a fascinating behind the scenes look at a few of the stress tests that HTC puts it's phones through to simulate the effects that real world usage will have on the phones throughout their lifetime. Unfortunately, this video doesn't show a crucial test that I'm assuming they don't do. And that's the drunken 'drop your phone into some sort of container of liquid' maneuver. Oh well, maybe for the Nexus Two...





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Jackie Chan Street Fighter 2 movie spoof

Go ahead and file this one under the WTF category. Apparently in 1993 there was a movie named City Hunter, starring Jackie Chan. In this movie Chan plays some small bonus parts in the form of Street Fighter 2 characters, including Chun-Li. Yeah, if you don't say "WTF did I just watch" at the end of this one, you're a better man than I...




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New Battlefield: Bad Company 2 trailer

So Modern Warfare 2 isn't your thing? No problems, you're probably more of a Battlefield person. Unfortunately the next true sequel in the form of Battlefield 3 isn't coming anytime soon, but lucky for you it looks like Bad Company 2 is coming along quite nicely. Can't wait for the PC beta.




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Super Street Fighter 4; now with more cars

Capcom has released a new trailer for their upcoming SF4 update, Super Street Fighter 4. It shows off 4 new "modes" in the game. The best news? Mode 4 (around the 2:02 mark in the vid), the return of the classic car and barrel bonus stages! Both stages are looking better than ever of course.



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NEWS FLASH! Left 4 Dead 2 not as good when censored.

As you've probably heard, the Australian government had previously banned Left 4 Dead 2 from being sold in the country. This forced Valve to either censor it, or lose out on a nice chunk of change. They chose to censor their content. Here's a playthrough of the first map of the demo on the Australian version, in all of it's non-gore glory.

As you can see, the blood has basically been completely taken out. Dead bodies almost immediately disappear, the fancy new limb dismemberment of the sequel is completely disabled, and the infected are unable to catch fire. Bad news for L4D fans from down under, as this version looks pretty dull compared to ours.

Luckily there's a way to bypass this censorship! At least if you're a PC gamer that is. Thanks to the PC's nature of being open and moddable, you can edit some files to bring all the blood and gore back to where it should be. No guarantees that this will continue to work on the full version, but for now have fun and check out the process HERE.




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Today Show gets Ewok-Rolled

Ok, so this doesn't have anything to do with gaming. It's nerd based so it's good enough for me. And seeing these allegedly drunk Ewoks hamming it up on live TV must be seen. Enjoy.



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Modern Warfare 2 hitting some speed bumps up to release

The official retail release date of Infinity Ward's guaranteed blockbuster Modern Warfare 2 is now less than a week away. But to go along with all the hype building for the release, IW has had to deal with some negative aspects as well.

First, Infinity Ward announced that the PC version will not support dedicated servers, and that all multiplayer will be run through IW servers with a special matchmaking service. This caused huge waves through the PC crowd, and invoked an online petition that has gathered over 180,000 signatures in just a few weeks. Dedicated servers is a core feature of PC gaming, and allows gamers to have a "home" online for a specific game. Whether it's a server focusing on mods, or a clan server, they allow people the opportunity to grow a community with a game that they love.

Secondly, the Xbox 360 version of the game is already floating around the internet tubes. Not good, but it's to be expected.

Next, the leaked footage from the game showing you, the player, gunning down innocent people in an American airport terminal with a group of Terrorists. This has already gotten a decent amount of press from the 'in the know' sites of gaming, once the game hits retail it should definitely hit the mainstream press as well.

And now a Machinima-style video released by the team has had to be pulled from the developer's YouTube channel, because it caused even more uproar from people that are apparently waaay to easily offended and need something better to do.



A simple public service announcement about the Fight Against Grenade Spam. Which, when acronym-ized, makes a word that apparently makes people angry.




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Left 4 Dead 2 "Realism Mode" on video

The Realism option in Left 4 Dead 2 has been mostly a mystery so far. Luckily G4 had a chance to play the new mode, and share the video with us. Aside from the girl playing it being for the most part terrible at the game, the video is pretty awesome. Showing off a level from the Hard Rain campaign.

Check out the video HERE



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DSi XL shown on video

Nintendo announced the upcoming DSi XL/LL the other day, but it was kind of hard to get a good grasp on the size of it. Thankfully TV Osaka broadcasted a clip on the new device. It helps to give you an idea of the size, and lets you see it briefly in action.



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