Highly anticipated Fallout 3 is sure to please fans of the series, judging by the latest IGN preview of the game. The game features a mix of role-playing elements and FPS techniques. The way in which players set up their character can be called innovative, unlocking new settings as your character ages - and at the same time providing a sort of tutorial to familiarize yourself with controls and icons. Man’s best friend will be there to accompany you on your journeys if you let it. You find the dog when its former owner is assaulted by a group of raiders. The owner does not survive, but the dog is more than happy to join you. Dogmeat can be very handy during fights, but also to recover items you need - such as guns. You can count on Bethesda Softworks for dark post-apocalyptic environments with realistic atmospheres. The game offers various ways to solve situations, whether you build a heavy weapon specialist that uses brute force to get what he wants, or a stealthy assassin backstabbing opponents. Fallout 3 is scheduled to be released at the end of this year.

War, as the intro to Fallout 3 tells us, never changes. And for much of the last year, the information that we had on Fallout 3 itself hadn’t changed, as Bethesda Softworks kept a low profile as it worked on what is easily one of the most anticipated games of the year. But now Bethesda is looking to break radio silence, and we jumped at the chance to see the latest progress on this epic single-player role-playing game set in a memorable post-apocalyptic world. So buckle up, and we’ll describe what we saw at a demonstration of the game this week.

We learned last year that character creation was tied into your character’s birth in Vault 101, but we finally got to see what Bethesda was talking about. You’ll literally emerge from your mother’s womb and open your eyes to see a doctor and your father (voiced by Liam Neeson) looking down on you. Don’t worry: Bethesda doesn’t get graphic in this sequence; all you see in blackness before your eyes focus, but you can very clearly hear the doctor and your father discuss your birth. And like with any new baby, one of the first things they say is, “It’s a boy/girl!” That’s because this is the very first selection that you make when creating a character, and which option you choose will determine the gender pronoun used throughout the game (One fun little bit of trivia is that if you press the A button during this sequence you’ll trigger a baby cry).

Find the entire article at IGN’s PC section.

Third-person adventure game Gray Matter’s release has been delayed due to a change in development studios. Jane Jensen is part of the team working on the game, she is well known for her work on Gabriel Knight. Adventure game fans will not see the game before 2009.

Grand Theft Auto 4 - New Trailer

I know millions of gamers are eagerly waiting for GTA 4’s release. One of the most popular games of all time, the fourth instalment will feature improved graphics, a huge city to explore, and an exciting storyline. And of course the one thing that made Grand Theft Auto so famous - free to walk/drive/fly around as you please. Click here for the trailers.

Overclocked is a psychological adventure thriller being developed by House Of Tales. It’s promising to bring a unique story mixed with rather innovative playing styles. A mental institute on Staten Island requests your (David McNamara) assistance. Five people have been picked up all over New York in similar circumstances. Your task is to extract information from their memory, which will be hard as they’ve forgotten what the heck happened. The innovative part is that you will not just be watching their memories “unfold” but rather take an interactive role in them. So by re-living these memories you get the information you are after. It wouldn’t hurt David to visit a psychiatrist himself as he certainly isn’t free from inner demons himself! And if he isn’t depressed enough, the city is darkened by a huge thunderstorm that knows no end. This game is definitely for adults, and is a far cry from the “safe” and not so controversial adventure games that make up most of the genre. The good graphics re-enforce the gloomy atmosphere in the game world. Overclocked should be out this month.

It’s been a long time since I last saw Overclocked: A History of Violence in action. So long, in fact, that many details of the highly-promising E3 ‘06 demonstration have been all but buried since then. Fortunately, a preview version of House of Tales’ ambitious new thriller arrived recently, which not only served as a physical stimulus for forgotten memories, but also a firm reminder of why there was so much reason to be psyched in the first place.

Unless you’ve been locked away in a padded room wearing that funny white jacket with its sleeves in the back, you’ll know by now that the themes of psychosis and suppressed memories are central to Overclocked. The game begins with news of five different young people being picked up across New York City, all holding weapons, all disoriented, and none with any memory of who they are or how they arrived at such a state. And while the amnesic protagonist idea is a well-worn cliché, rest assured that the game’s approach to the concept is not.

Find the entire article at Adventure Gamers.

Though it’s widely known for its acclaimed Battlefield games, the Swedish studio DICE does have a proud history of developing for a wide variety of genres. DICE has made racing games, pinball games, and even an equestrian game called Legacy of Rosemond Hill. With that said, Mirror’s Edge is unlike anything DICE has made before. Indeed, it’s almost unlike anything that we’ve ever seen before, but it nevertheless looks cool. If you had to describe it in a sentence, it’s almost like a first-person parkour game. And if you haven’t heard of parkour, then do a search for it on YouTube.

Find out more at GameSpot.

If you have 20 minutes - read the IGN feature on adventure gaming.

It’s been almost 5 years since Westwood Studios released Command & Conquer Renegade, their first FPS game in the Command & Conquer series. The game failed to meet public expectations and Westwood Studios closed shop shortly after its release. Unlike Renegade, Tiberium will put you in the role of battlefield commander. Your job will be to secure areas, gather intel and make sure the main battle groups can work efficiently. The Forward Battle Commander (you) will be wearing heavy body armor with Crysis-like features, such as the ability to jump on top of buildings and other objects. EA has not forgotten the story. The storyline will continue where Command & Conquer 3 ended. A highly modified version of the Unreal Engine will be used for the game. Although there are several screen shots available already which look quite impressive, the game is not near completion yet. We are looking at a late 2008 or early 2009 release.

Tiberium isn’t the first first-person shooter EA has created out of its popular Command & Conquer real-time strategy franchise, but it is the first attempt in over half a decade. As such, Tiberium will bring all the latest technology to the fray, and developer EALA looks to craft a game that will blend the squad control of the RTS games with intense first-person shooter gameplay. Along the way, Tiberium will also fill in huge holes in the history of the Command & Conquer universe. We finally got our first look at Tiberium recently, and EA showed off some of its core gameplay and features.

Go to GAMESPOT for the first impressions of Tiberium!

Age of Conan: Hyborean Adventures is not a game for the faint-hearted. Violence, suspense and a lot of blood are all involved in playing Funcom’s upcoming MMORPG. Thousands of people are eagerly waiting to see if Funcom was able to recreate the Age of Conan world, and stay true to it’s storyline and characters. The screen shots we’ve seen so far are impressive, and we are curious whether they will be able to optimize the frame rate enough to make it run decently on the average computer. What worries us slightly is the PvP action. In a title like Age of Conan you can’t have World Of Warcraft style PvP combat, it needs to be more direct to immerse the player. And although the combat system does include some new features it isn’t revolutionary from what we’ve gathered.

On our first foray into the Hyborean wilderness, we encountered the very same prostitute we’d met in earlier previews. We opted to rescue her in exchange for the promise of some future “reward,” which, from what we could gather, was going to somehow involve some lasciviousness. Immediately apparent was the distinctly mature flavor of our initial activities, because Age of Conan doesn’t sugarcoat anything: combat is bloody and brutal, sex workers are brazen and lascivious and men are covered with densely matted hair and look like they smell as bad as the other animals we encountered in the jungles surrounding Tortage.

The jungle environment makes World of Warcraft’s Stranglethorn Vale look like a kiddie pool lined with fern fronds. The wilds rimming Tortage are packed with marauders and vicious predators that attack at the slightest provocation. The tangled vines and dense foliage create an ominous atmosphere and we could almost feel the soft loam beneath our feet sink just a bit with each step. In terms of graphical fidelity, the jungle encasing Tortage was simply stellar — totally capturing the feral fauna and overgrown flora and presenting them as though both were locked in constant combat with Tortage, threatening to devour the small but fiercely defended community of brigands and wildmen.

Go to GAMESPY for the full preview!

With The Sims series being the best selling PC game ever, it’s not surprising Electronic Arts keeps trying to milk their profitable product with expansions and spin-offs. Simcity Societies is the latest game based on The Sims, offering you the possibility to “run” an entire city. A mix of The Sims and Simcity is a pretty good description. If you are looking for an in-depth complex city builder then perhaps you should ignore this game. It’s quite simple in structure, and will only offer casual city building options. Disappointingly it’s so easy to win in this game that it offers almost no challenge. The game does look pretty good and there are a lot of buildings you can build, though the engine could have been optimized more for smoother gameplay.

The idea sounds good in theory: Each building you place has a positive or negative effect on a particular social energy. There are six of these energies, from creativity to spirituality, and each building uses or provides them in different amounts. As your city grows, you unlock newer buildings and décor, each of which is separated into various themes, such as “romantic” or “cyberpunk.” You don’t have to theme your city, so feel free to mix and match. The categorizations are actually rather helpful because you can create themed neighborhoods without having to scroll through full lists of buildings.

Your Sims need to have places to work, hang out, and live, but you’ll rarely need to worry about it. To succeed in SimCity Societies, all you have to do is treat your social energies as currency and keep them relatively evened out. Doing that makes everything from Sim happiness to your coffers fall nicely into place. Need authority? Build a town hall. Have too much? Build a police station. Just don’t ask why it is a police station spends authority–like many of the categorizations, the connection between a building and its social energies is mighty unclear. Why would a service station spend productivity, while a butcher shop creates it? All you can do is look beyond it and realize that it’s not a connection at all–just a random abstraction created to balance out what is in effect six different currencies running simultaneously.

Click here for the full review at GameSpot.

A nice little feature of Tabula Rasa is a human-controlled main character that you can interact with. NPCs are boring and linear. We don’t have the technology yet to create intelligent AI characters. So it will be interesting to see how this Tabula Rasa concept will work out.

In the future an evil race called the Bane are on tour around the galaxy destroying planets, and killing organisms, including humans. You will be one of the few surviving humans who must halt the Bane’s destructive actions and save humanity. Okay not terribly original, but let’s not forget that this is mainly an FPS game full of fact-paced action. From what information is out there we can conclude that roleplaying will not be a significant part of the game. This could change later on when they add new content to the game.

Tabula Rasa launched a short while ago so check it out. There are several similar games planned for release in 2007/2008, so there will be plenty of choice for people who love mmofps games.

We’ve already seen and played enough of Tabula Rasa to have a pretty good idea of the game’s basics, but that doesn’t mean we can’t still be surprised by some interesting decisions the developers are making. Today at GDC we had the chance to chat with Starr Long and see another demo of the game. It didn’t contain much information that we hadn’t seen or heard before, but we did learn a bit about the Spy class’s impressive new Polymorph ability.

This late game ability requires the use of a number of specific Logos symbols to transmute the Spy’s appearance to that of one of his or her many enemies. Once the power is unlocked, the Spy has the ability to turn into a general rank and file unit but as the power is upgraded, the Spy can take on the form of more and more powerful units.

For several articles about Tabula Rasa, go to IGN.

As I stepped out of the elevator onto the eight floor of the Aperture Science Laboratories’ portal testing division, the public announce system issued the following cheerful warning:

“Please note that we have added a consequence for failure. Any contact with the chamber floor will result in an unsatisfactory mark on your official testing record–followed by death.”

Well. Far be it for the nameless test subject in Portal to disappoint the narrator by receiving unsatisfactory marks and possibly dying, thereby skewing Aperture’s test results. Of course, I have to admit that the first time I heard this witty line–along with many others–I couldn’t help smiling. In Portal, Valve has crafted a First Person Puzzler filled with tons of spatial puzzles and clever writing, along with the promise of cake at the end of the tests. It stands to reason that Portal could very well be the “sweetest” game in The Orange Box package.

If you want to read the entire preview click HERE.

To run this graphic intensive piece of software you will need a high performance system if you want to enjoy the game in high resolutions. Thankfully according to IGN the game looks pretty with medium settings as well, even on medium-range computers. The demo can be found here and is 1.2 GIGS large.

Epic destruction is everywhere in Massive’s latest. It’s a game that’s among the prettiest RTSs we’ve seen offering up detailed units, large well-rendered environments, and some truly spectacular special effects. The visuals in World in Conflict are brilliant on all fronts and provide an easy entry point for all comers to immediately sink in and enjoy some fast-action strategy though the price of entry may be expensive if you’re only in it for the big effects. Running everything on very-high at 1900×1200 can cause some serious frame rate dips on even a computer with an 8800GTX, 2GB of RAM and a Quad Core processor when the effects really start flying. Thankfully, the game still looks pretty at medium detail, which most medium range PCs should have no problem with.

Massive has also made entry easier for the average Joe by keeping the army size down to a minimum, keeping base and economy management out of the picture, keeping game times shorter, and the gameplay more immediately aggressive. It’s something Massive originally tried in their Ground Control series that they’ve updated and improved mightily here.

Read the entire review of World In Conflict by clicking HERE.

A poor man’s Oblivion. This description may seem a bit damning, but it puts the game in awfully fine company when you consider the sheer greatness of Bethesda’s role-playing game opus. Reality Pump’s RPG certainly has it where it counts in the aspiration department, even if, largely due to some design quirks, the first-time RPG developer can’t quite match the gold standard established by Oblivion last year. With that said, the epic scale of the game, along with outstanding character development, free-flowing action, and good quest variety, make it a worthwhile play for any RPG aficionado.

Read the entire review of Two Worlds by clicking HERE.

At 1.85 gigabytes it’s pretty large. But it’s worth the wait!
Download the BioShock demo

What are BioShock’s system requirements? Gamespot has the answers.
BioShock Hardware Guide

Read the in-depth review of BioShock.
Click here to load the review

A bit of criticism has been aired online about the introduction of multiple hero units with “special abilities”. With some saying it damages the realism of the game and others not wanting to play a Warcraft or Age of Empires clone. Either way add this game to your watch list.

Medieval II: Total War is already a big game, covering hundreds of years of European history and letting you play from the perspective of more than a dozen major powers of the time, such as England, France, the Holy Roman Empire, and beyond. And if that weren’t big enough, the game’s real-time battles, which easily feature thousands of units rendered in incredible detail, are amazing enough to steal the show. Well, Sega and Creative Assembly recently announced plans to make Medieval II a lot bigger with the addition of Medieval II: Total War Kingdoms, a supersized expansion that will add four new campaigns, a host of new factions, over 150 new units, and more. We turned to Creative Assembly game designer Penny Sweetser for more on the expansion, which is scheduled to ship later this year.

Go to GAMESPOT to view the whole article.

CDV is showing off its newest game at the Game Developers Conference, an action arcade air-combat game called Attack on Pearl Harbor, and as you can probably guess from its name, the game is set in World War II. This isn’t a serious flight simulation as much as it’s an action game that happens to feature airplanes, and it’s being aimed at veterans with a fond memory of such classics as Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe.

Attack on Pearl Harbor is set in the days leading up to the devastating Japanese attack on the Hawaiian naval base and the weeks afterward, though it probably won’t feature other major battles, such as Midway or the Coral Sea. You’ll be able to play as either a Japanese or American pilot in the campaign, and at your disposal will be a stable of historically appropriate aircraft. While the game isn’t a hardcore flight sim, it will try and capture the basic characteristics of each aircraft. For instance, the Japanese Zero will be nimbler than American fighters, but the latter will be more durable.

CLICK HERE to get more information about Attack on Pearl Harbor.