As we have seen in the past, one of the major franchises keeping Sony in the console race is Square Enix's Final Fantasy. In the past, Microsoft has repeatedly tried to buy out Final Fantasy. Fortunately for Sony fans everywhere, Square Enix has not yet yielded to the Microsoft. However, Square Enix recently promised Microsoft it's own RPG. Codenamed "Infinite Undiscovery", the game is "action-oriented, 'dynamic, compelling next-generation RPG' with a focus on real-time events."

When Rockstar studios decided that an AO rating on their gory creation Manhunt 2 wasn't going to get any sales, they had to take some of the more gratuitous gore out of their game. Hardcore Manhunt fans will be pleased to hear that the game itself remains largely untouched. However, stealth-kills were "heavily tweaked visually, adding a blur effect and darkening sequences to obscure violent viewpoints". Gamers will also not see the infamous "testicle ripping scene". Manhunt 2 is on track for a Halloween release.

The Orange Box-featuring Half-Life 2: Episode Two, Team Fortress 2, and Portal, as well as the complete Half-Life 2 experience to date-is now available for pre-purchase via Steam. Pre-purchase The Orange Box before the October 10 release to save 10% off the regular price and get exclusive access to the Team Fortress 2 beta on September 17.

The Orange Box, penned by IGN.com as "the package which could legitimately be called the deal of the century," features three highly-awaited new games by Valve: Half-Life 2: Episode Two, the second installment in the Half-Life 2 episodic trilogy; Team Fortress 2, the sequel to the game that put class-based, multiplayer team warfare on the map; and Portal, the game that blends puzzles, first person action, and adventure gaming to produce an experience like no other.

In what he claims was a fit of boredom, an intrepid user of 1Up stumbled upon the original script for the Halo movie. The 127 page script was drafted in 2005, and was only ditched because of studio problems with making the actual movie. Anyone who is truly obsessed with Halo and wants to read what would have been the Halo movie, please follow the source link.

As the title says, Valve's famous Orange Box will be coming to the PS3 a little later than it will be for the Xbox 360 and the PC. However, this is not due to difficulties with the PS3. The Valve team coding the Orange Box for the PS3 is having some internal difficulties, which will push the final version off for a few weeks in the long run. Valve will still release the Xbox 360 and PC versions as planned, on September 15th.

Edit: It seems as though there is some controversy over the release date of the Orange Box. If it does not come out on September 15th, expect to see Orange Box by October 9th in the USA and October 19th in Europe/PAL territories.

It's no big secret in the gaming world that Vivendi studios and Monolith Productions, the two companies behind F.E.A.R., aren't working together anymore. And so, this means that there was a large battle over the F.E.A.R. franchise. Vivendi got the rights to F.E.A.R., but Monolith got all the characters. While the rest of us scratch our heads in confusion, Warner Brothers Interactive announced that Vivendi was developing a F.E.A.R. sequel. Vivendi is proudly naming it 'Project Origin', a title that gamers chose. There is no word as of yet what Vivendi plans to do with none of the rights to the original characters. We'll keep you posted.

While the first half of this year saw almost no interesting video games, it seems that this half of the year is seeing a new blockbuster every month. The very anticipated shooter Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, which was co-developed by id Software and Activision, has officially gone gold. In an unusual move, Europeans/Australians will get the video game before their North American counterparts. Europeans and Australians will get to play the game on September 28th, while the North Americans have to wait until October 2nd for their turn.

The PC version of this game is $49USD, and $59USD for the Limited Collectors Edition. Xbox 360 and PS3 ports are "in the works", but there is no word as to when we can see them.

I think we would all agree that the PlayStation 2 has had a long run, with no signs of recent sales slowing down. To keep things interesting, this November Sony will release a white PS2 bundled with "SingStar Pop" and 2 USB microphones. The packaged deal will be available for $149.99USD. The new paint job is a welcome aesthetic change for those whose home decor doesn't accommodate for the "flat black" original, or anyone with a different taste in colors.

Nokia is bringing games to their current and future N-series cell phones. The new service entitled "N-Gage" will provide gamers with download access to applications, games, challenges and contests. Games are priced from $8-$10 and are currently compatible with N73, N81, N95 series, N93 series and more coming.

The latest patch for Tom Clancy's "Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2", v1.04, is now available. There have been a few fantastic changes made, including multicore support and the ability to run multiple dedicated servers on a single machine! The patch includes various minor fixes as well.

Today marks the official launch of the PS3 only title, Warhawk. In Warhawk, up to 32 players can battle it out in the air and on land, amidst beautifully detailed landscapes and up in the clouds. Your mission: Defend against the invading Chernovan fleet, using tanks, jeeps, transports, fighters and small arms. The SIXAXIS controller is used to pilot the aerial vehicles, sensing your movements to control roll, pitch and yaw. The retail edition costs $60 and comes with a Bluetooth headset. For more screenshots, see Source link below.

Here's some good news for everyone who's been waiting for one of the most anticipated first person shooters of the year: Crysis. The demo of Crysis is expected to be released by September 25th, 2007. The demo throws gamers into the first level of the single player campaign, named "contact", and allows said gamers to marvel at the technological advances and eye candy Crysis has to offer.

In the meantime, check out the latest Crysis Gameplay trailer.

Manhunt 2 by Take-Two and Rockstar has finally been granted an "M" for Mature rating by the ESRB. The game was toned down after it originally earned an "AO" for Adults Only rating, which many stores refuse to carry. The game is now back on schedule to be released October 31st in the US on the PlayStation 2 and Wii.

Toys R Us must have got a memo wrong, because they started selling copies of BioShock a week before the game was supposed to be released (August 21st). While gamers were conspiring to determine which stores had goofed, 2k Games worked to stop the leak in it's entirety. Internal E-mails were fired off, and now Toys R Us does not sell BioShock (though, they do still have it in stock). It is unclear whether or not 2K Games will fine Toys R Us, and an official statement from both companies is expected shortly.

Xbox 360 got a pleasant surprise on Sunday: a working BioShock demo. Unfortunately, the same could not be said for PC users. 2K Games stated that making a working PC demo was a lot harder than a working Xbox 360 demo, because they have to make it work on a large variety of machines. While Xbox 360 customers are happily fragging each other on (a demo of) one of the most anticipated shooters of the year, PC owners need to wait until the BioShock demo goes through the final stages of QA at 2K Games.

We tried as hard as humanly possible to get it out to you guys simultaneously with the 360 demo, but we needed to make sure that it was perfect -- that all drivers were ready, and that the game looked great on a huge variety of computers

In other news, BioShock: Breaking the Mold, a large artbook containing all sorts of information on the BioShock world (including spoilers), is now available for download.

It's been eleven years since Duke Nukem was first unleashed, and with Duke Nukem Forever still in development, even the most hardcore fans are getting impatient. And so, 3DRealms' George Broussard announced plans to port the classic Duke Nukem into Xbox Live Arcade. Broussard has already discussed plans with Microsoft. He's just waiting for some paperwork to go through, and then we'll see Duke Nukem in Xbox Live soon afterwords.

The wonderful people with a strange abundance of spare time over at 1Up have found a very interesting title in the German game rating system: a request to rate a certain "World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King (GC-Demo)". The (GC-Demo) part could possibly stand for "Game Convention Demo", which would make perfect sense considering the upcoming Leipzig Games Convention and Blizzcon.

If this is a formal expansion, it will almost surely be announced at Blizzcon this weekend. Wrath of the Lich King is currently rumored to open up the Northrend section of the World of Warcraft, where Arthas and the Lich King were last seen in Warcraft 3.

World in Conflict is an RTS game that is set in 1988, where economic troubles, similar to the ones that occurred in real-life, cripple the Soviet Union to the extent where it must risk nuclear Armageddon to stay in power.
Massive Entertainment, Sierra and Intel invite you to join the open beta and find out what you are made of. Registration begins on 1 July and will be open until the end of the open beta phase. The open beta will begin on 11 July and will last until 31 July.

Signup here.

Since America's Army was first released, people have claimed it was nothing more than a propaganda tool, designed to get kids hooked onto the idea of joining the American military. Regardless of the ulterior purpose of this game, it is massively successful. America's Army has been released 23 different times (different versions on different platforms), and the original has been in circulation for five years. The internet based game currently boasts 8.5 million registered users. Assuming that the registered users are the active users, this game is more popular than World of Warcraft. Ironically, said users are generally not from the United States. Most AA players are from over 60 different countries.

If you haven't played America's Army and would like to try it out, please get a demo off of FileFront. America's Army missions are sometimes used to train American soldiers.

Intel, at its Research@Intel Day in Santa Clara, CA, announced that it is working on an anti-cheat system for games. The idea is that Intel and the PC gaming industry would build technology into gaming rigs that could detect when common cheats - such as "aimbots" that handle targeting while the player just holds down the trigger - are used in an online gaming session, said Travis Schluessler, a researcher at Intel.

PCs equipped with this technology would notify a server that someone in the game is using a cheat, and then the game administrator could set a policy of kicking the cheat offline. Intel is still working out the details; don't expect to find this in a high-end gaming PC anytime soon.

Rockstar Games' upcoming title Manhunt 2 has become the first game in over ten years to be banned in the UK. According to the British Board of Film Censors (BBFC), who decide the ratings for games, "unrelenting focus on stalking and brutal slaying" in the game could cause harm to those playing it. David Cooke, director of the BBFC, said:

Manhunt 2 is distinguishable from recent high-end video games by its unremitting bleakness and callousness of tone in an overall game context which constantly encourages visceral killing with exceptionally little alleviation or distancing. There is sustained and cumulative casual sadism in the way in which these killings are committed, and encouraged, in the game.

The last game to be banned by the BBFC was Carmageddon, released in 1997 - this ban was later overturned in an appeal, so there may yet be hope for Manhunt fans, although the original game was also the subject of much criticism which is unlikely to help its cause.

Everyone who's ever waited for a Blizzard game to be released knows just how long "when it's ready" is. StarCraft2 is no exception to this rule. Unfortunately for anyone waiting for StarCraft2, this game is not going to be "ready" for quite some time. MSNBC scored an interview with Rob Pardo, the VP of game design at Blizzard, which explains when we can see this game.

I can give you the old Blizzard mantra of: 'It'll ship when it's ready,'" said Pardo, "but it's something that historically, we've learned to keep release dates really close to the vest. I think all game developers are extremely optimistic, and we used to give optimistic dates and we'd disappoint our fans when we didn't hit them. So now, I think we've just gotten more gun shy. The only thing I can give you [that's] concrete is it's not going to be this year. Some people were hoping, because of how advanced the game looks, that we'd have it out by Christmas, but that's definitely not happening.

StarCraft2 started development in 2003, and full production started a year later. The team working on this game comprises of 40 people.

StarCraft2 will be available for PC and Mac "when it's done".

In the past, we've seen video games dedicated to cancer victims, charities started by gamers, and other hospitable acts towards the less fortunate by gamers. Now, non-profit HopeLab and Cigna have created a PC game that's designed to make cancer patients feel better. Re-Mission is game designed around educating children about cancer. It allows players to see what cancer is, and how to properly combat it. This game is free to any cancer patient, doctor, or medical facility that wants it.

What is truly surprising though is the results of this game. Studies have shown that cancer patients actually have a much better time battling cancer after they've played this game. The game increases cancer patients "quality of life, knowledge about cancer... and their self-efficacy to communicate about cancer." Cancer patients who have played this game also have a much better prognosis.

Even more interestingly, young patients who played the game apparently maintained higher blood levels in chemotherapy and had higher rates of success in staving off the cancer in their bodies, suggesting that the game succeeded in convincing players to stick to their therapy.

If you'd like more information on this wonderful game, please visit Cigna for a copy.

The demo of Lara Croft's upcoming adventure "Tomb Raider: Anniversary" is out now. The game is a complete re-make of the first Tomb Raider game which was originally released in 1996 for the PlayStation. It's powered by an advanced version of the previous hit game's (Tomb Raider: Legend) engine and takes you on a quest to Peru where you have to find the mysterious artifact known as the Scion.

Tomb Raider: Anniversary (Demo) (257MB)

techPowerUp! Mirror

SUNNYVALE, CA - May 23, 2007 - After warming their amps in the basement garage to rocking sold out shows at Stonehenge, fans of Activision, Inc.'s (Nasdaq: ATVI) wildly popular Guitar Hero franchise will now be able to shred like never before with the next iteration of the game that will be available this fall. The new game will be released on the PlayStation 2 computer entertainment system and PLAYSTATION 3 computer entertainment system, Xbox 360 video game and entertainment system from Microsoft, and Wii video game system from Nintendo.