GameTrailers has posted the E3 2008 developer walkthrough video - in three parts - of Spore.

Click “Read more…” for part 2 and part 3.

But why the music from Mozart’s Requiem? And why is she blowing up her pad — in reverse? It looks pre-rendered, be nice to see some live action.

As usual, it’s coming to nearly every platform in existence: Nintendo DS, PC, Sony PlayStation 2, Sony PlayStation 3, Nintendo Wii, and Microsoft Xbox 360. What, no Dreamcast or Sega Genesis? (Seriously - no PlayStation Portable?)

The Nine Inch Nails 3-pack will include:

• “Burn”
• “Capital G”
• “Last”

In addition, there will be two Shinedown tracks, including:

• “Devour”
• “Junkies For Fame”

As usual, the songs will appear on the PlayStation Store two days later, and the price for the NIN 3-pack will be $5.49 (440 Microsoft Points), while each song is $1.99 (160 MSP).

(Thanks, Rock Band forums.)

Ben takes aim at the mediocre, disappointing survival horror game, Alone in the Dark. Check it out.

(Though, that little live action bit at the end - that was kind of out of left field, wasn’t it, Ben?)

Click “Read more…” to see the entire roundup of Gears of War 2 information.

STORY

Gears of War 2 takes place 6 months after the events of Gears of War 1.  Locusts are back with city sinking technology.  The city Jocinto is the last safe haven for humanity as the cities around it have all fallen.  The COG must hit the Locust horde at it’s heart, underground where they live and breed.  Meanwhile Dom is searching for his wife Maria and has a lead on her location at the start of the game.  The 15 hour campaign story mode will be played as Marcus Fenix, the returning anti-hero from Gears of War 1.

CAMPAIGN GAMEPLAY CHANGES

• Multiple save files
• Two new difficulty levels, one easier than “Casual” and one harder than “Insane”
• Downed enemy executions expanded, now there are four choices based on equipped weapon and character
• Blood trails on walls and on the ground if players (or meatshield) are injured and bleeding
• Meatshield, pick up a downed Locust or opponent and use them as a shield.  The meatshield will deteriorate as it takes bullets.  In Meatshield mode you can only use the Gorgon Burst Pistol to defend yourself.  Meatshield also works in multiplayer modes.
• Roady running has been tweaked so you don’t get stuck in cover as often, also applies to multiplayer.
• You can now hit X to cancel out of radio message narratives and cutscenes
• Collectables are back and will help the story narrative such as journals, newspapers and posters.
• New bigger boss fights to wrap up chapters
• Chapter checkpoint system is back

NEW COG CHARACTERS

• Dizzy, a former stranded Truck Driver forced to join the COG to save his family
• Tai Kaliso, the spiritual warrior

RETURNING COG CHARACTERS

• Marcus Fenix
• Dominic Santiago
• Baird
• Cole
• Carmine

(Col. Hoffman so far has not been talked about or seen in videos.  He may be K.I.A.)

VEHICLES

• Centaur Tank complete with active reload enhanced cannon fire
• Derrick which is huge truck with platform shown in trailers, rideable only.
• Brumak , you can saddle one and ride it
• Reavers, Marcus and Dom talk about riding one but it has not been shown or confirmed by Epic as actually doable in-game.

NEW LOCUSTS:

• Brumak, you will fight them as well as saddle them as a vehicle
• Kantus Monks who can heal fallen Locusts, has a sonic attack and can summon Tickers
• Tickers, mobile explosive creature.  They scurry around like roaches trying to stay out of your line of site and explode when they get close.  They make a clicking noise.
• Acheron, a gargantuan Locust used to take out vehicles is one of the boss fights
• Mauler is a Boomer sized Locus equipped with a shield and an explosive flail
• Blood Mounts are a Locust troop transport creature
• Reavers now land and walk and will shoot rockets and stab at you with their tentacles
• Scorch Drone carries the flame thrower and has an explosive back pack
• Grapple Drones have a grappling hook to help them climb up to areas, you can shoot the hooks to send them falling to their death
• Mulcher Boomer has different armor and wields the new Mulcher chain gun
• Hammerhead Grunt Locust named after it’s shark looking helmet

NEW AND CHANGED WEAPONS (all original weapons will return)

• Gorgon Burst Pistol, has multiple clips and shoots in full auto bursts
• Ink Poison grenades spew poison gas that will kill if you linger around it
• Chainsaw Duels which is an A button mashing mini-game
• Scorcher is a flamethrower that increases range with an active reload
• Boltok Pistol is back and gets a speed boost with an active reload
• Mortar Cannon shoots a mortar into the air that rains down on top of enemies
• Hammer of Dawn usable only 3 times, 4th time will make it explode killing you
• Boomshot now gets 3 rockets but they’re weakened.  With 2 rockets left and an active reload, you can shoot both at once.
• Shotgun has been changed to be more consistent and eliminate ‘host’ advantage
• Mulcher is a chain gun, it’s heavy and will slow you down but you can shoot it from the hip or it’s deployable or you can mount it on cover which increases it’s accuracy.  Will overheat, you need to balance the barrel spinning with cooling
• Iron Shield is a deployable shield you get off the Mauler.  Can be planted in the ground for portable cover or strapped to your arm.
• Grenades can now be stuck to walls and they turn into proximity mines
• Hammerburst requires trigger pumping to fire with the recoil increasing with firing speed
• Smoke Grenades now have a stun effect if a player is in the blast radius

MAPS, more than 12 available out of the box

• Gridlock 2.0 is a slight variant of the original mostly to do with lighting
• Subway 2.0 is back also re-worked for gears 2 and will have running trains
• Dusk is a smaller map, similar size to Raven Down
• Avalanche, snowy map with a horn that signals an impending avalanche to come down and wipe out everything in it’s path.  This opens new areas of the map with new weapons
• Day One is a downtown location with a Seeder that pops up out of the ground to mess with your aiming when you try and shoot from one side of the map to another
• Security has laser barriers that will require buttons to be pressed to get to other parts of the map.
• River, symmertrical map with a house and sniper tower with a river through it
• Plus more will be added via DLC later

CAMPAIGN CO-OP

• Pop-in pop-out co-op is back but it is still limited to only two players.  This if or story telling reasons.
• Special cut-scenes specifically for co-op play throughs

HORDE CO-OP

• 5 player survival game
• Features 50 waves of increasingly more bad-ass Locust Horde attacks
• Continue checkpoint system every 5 levels
• Horde mode will be playable on every single map available in the game

VERSUS MULTIPLAYER

• Expanded to 5 vs 5
• Character models expanded to 12 COG and 12 Locust in Gears 2
• AI Bots will be available to round out lopsided teams
• Party System added, works in ranked and unranked games
• TrueSkill will be used to match parties together, skills will be averaged and matched
• No clan support planned for release but could possibly be added later
• Host advantage being nullified by network code tweaks that will give people an equal connection experience
• Voice chat handling is being offloaded from the host to other clients in the game
• No more ‘god mode’ while chainsawing, you can be killed during the animation but the second the animation starts, the opponent is also dead.
• Chainsaw randomness being addressed by Chainsaw Dueling mini-game
• Stopping Power is being introduced to counter the Shotgun Roll.  Now if someone is charging you, your bullets will slow them down preventing them from rolling and giving you a shotty to the face.
• New bleed-out feature allows players the chance to crawl to safety for revival
• Kill while you’re down.  If you had grenades equipped when you got downed, wait for the enemy to come close for an execution and pull RT to blow you both up.
• Time to chainsaw alone is equal to the duel plus the chainsawing finish
• New stamina bar which affects your running and fighting skill (tough we have yet to see this in any multi-player demos so far.  This might have been pulled from production)
• Random weapon location respawns for some weapons
• Players can choose to spawn with Hammerburst or Lancer

VERSUS GAME MODES

• Execution makes a return unmodified
• Warzone makes a return unmodified
• Annex makes a return unmodified
• Assassination returns as “Guardian”, teammates can respawn as long as the leader lives
• *Wanted, is a 9 v 1 mode.  Each player takes turns as the 1 and their survival longevity is timed
• Ordeal, team game has teams battling to be the first to 100 enemy kills (we assume this will be two teams of COGs vs AI Locusts.  Otherwise it’s just Team DM to 100 points which is frankly below Epic’s standards)
• Wingman, is a 5 teams of 2 last man standing game with 6 revivals per player possible
• Submission aka “Meatflag”, center flag game where the flag is a Stranded who you must down and drag to the score point but the Stranded AI player will not go willingly.  

VERSUS DEAD BOX

• More interactive features while you wait for the game to end
• Photo feature lets you take battle pictures and share them with friends
• Photo’s get scored based on different criteria
• No video recording is planned for launch
• Chase camera so you can see what pathway players took
• Full exploring of maps with flying camera so you can lean the maps while dead

MATCHMAKING

• Party system will allow your party of 5 to jump into a ranked or unraked match together
• Matching will be based on Truskill as an average of your party vs another party
• There will be playlists for both ranked and unranked matches
• Map choice will be picked by voting, two options will be shown and the map that is played will be the one that gets the most votes.  If no one votes, a random third map will be picked.
• Online web based stats are planned for the future

ACHIEVEMENTS

• To prevent players from being tunnel versioned, you can only earn one credit towards a specific achievement per match.  
• There will be achievement tracking so you can see how you’re progressing

This is every piece of information we could find so far about Gears of War 2 to date.  We expect there is more to be revealed as the game gets closer to release.  The retail packaging will include both a standard edition and a limited edition just like the original.  Based on what we’ve learned so far it looks like Epic has addressed many of the concerns of the gamers, they’ve made changes to the game to make it be played the way they intended and they’ve ratcheted up the intensity.  This is a much bigger and bad ass game than the original and we can’t wait to pick up the Lancer again and save humanity on November 7th.

Information Sources for this article :
Early Cliff B interview

http://www.gametrailers.com/player/33954.html

EGM Cover Story

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3167972

Gamepro Cliff B Interview

http://www.gamepro.com/microsoft/xbox360/games/features/193148.shtml

1Up video interview with Cliff B outside Epic Games

http://www.xbox-scene.com/xbox1data/sep/EkEuuEkEuFzinVGXLk.php

Rod Fergusson interview from E3

http://www.gametrailers.com/player/36497.html

Gamespot Cliff B Interview from E3

http://www.gamespot.com/video/938611/6194211/videoplayerpop?

G4TV E3 Interview and game demo with Cliff B

http://e3.g4tv.com/e32008/videos/27001/Face_Time_Gears_of_War_2_Demo.html

Geoff Keighley pre-E3 interview with Cliff B, Campaign focused

http://www.gametrailers.com/player/36108.html

Geoff Keighley pre-E3 interview with Cliff B, Multiplayer focused

http://www.gametrailers.com/player/36113.html

Gears of War 2 E3 Presentation Demo from press conference

http://www.gamersyde.com/leech_8008_en.html

Major Nelson interview with Cliff B from E3

http://www.xbox.com/NR/rdonlyres/8EA571EF-33CC-4D83-BBD6-1CC0C04E467C/0/vidCliffyBE3Gears2Hi.asx

Team Xbox interview with Cliff B

http://features.teamxbox.com/xbox/2249/Cliff-Bleszinski-Interview/p1

Team Xbox multiplayer preview writeup

http://previews.teamxbox.com/xbox-360/2025/Gears-of-War-2/p1/

UK Xbox360 Magazine Exclusive Gears 2 Multiplayer Feature

http://www.xbox360fanboy.com/2008/05/24/gears-of-war-2-x360-multiplayer-details-confirmed/

Why? Why would you want to kick someone out of your booth? The point of the booth is to get people to come into it so you can market your stuff to them! Well, it seems some of these booth guests found one of the games funny, and not in the good way. Castlevania: Judgment apparently isn’t quite living up to expectations, no matter how low they are. At least some people can find humor at the death of a franchise I’ve loved since I was a kid.

While we lack a release date, or any details on how Nintendo’s cute little story about friendly sentient plants and lost spacemen will be making their appearance on the the Wii, the fact that Shigeru mentioned it is official enough for me! I can imagine lots of neat ways the wiimote could be used to herd and control Pikmin, especially now that it’s getting more accurate.

(Thanks, CVG.)

Let’s go through them then shall we? The biggest and the one that people are still talking about, and will continue to talk about for a long time is Square-Enix’s announcement that Final Fantasy XIII will be coming to the Xbox 360 at the same time it comes out for Playstation 3, despite Sony owning 9% of Square-Enix. FFXIII joins a growing list of games that were originally announced as PS3 exclusives that ended up coming to the 360 as well: Grand Theft Auto IV, Devil May Cry 4, Assassin’s Creed, Virtua Fighter 5, Beautiful Katamari, and Fatal Inertia. The only game that Sony’s managed to keep exclusive is Metal Gear Solid 4, and even that is up in the air now, too.

Sony could have kept all of these exclusive to their console if they had just opened up their wallet and made it worthwhile for the developers. Video game development costs have skyrocketed in the last two console cycles. Developers are spending around $100 million dollars per game, and in order to recoup those costs they need to sell a lot of games or get funding to make up for the loss of sales by restricting their game to a single console. Sony seems unwilling, while Microsoft is more than happy to, and we’re seeing the results.

Another problem is that Sony has been unable to deliver on the promise of its console. PS3 was launched with the promise that Home would soon be coming to the console, that was two years ago! There is still no Home. In fact, Sony’s Jack Tretton has called the program “in No Man’s Land”! Talk about giving the press a field day! Microsoft has already shifted its focus with Live ,and will be rolling it out this fall, delivering on many of the promises Sony made about Home, things like Avatars, watching movies and playing games with friends across the world, and creating a virtual meeting place for gamers! Sony is still not able to tell us when Home will be here - and region locking it, which Microsoft is not. Spending a little more money on development and securing usage rights to music and movies for Home could have delivered this product to console owners over a year ago, but again they haven’t been willing to.

Why? Why is Sony doing this? The hardware in the PS3 is ridiculously expensive! Sony has lost and lost and lost money on the console, and they’re trying to get some of that back by making the thing profitable. Sadly, they’re trying to do it by not spending any more money, but in today’s development atmosphere where money is made porting your game to as many systems as possible, you’re going to be hard pressed to move PS3 when the 360 is cheaper and there are no noticeable perks to owning a PS3 over an Xbox, aside from having a Blu-Ray player. Is there still time for Sony to make a comeback or have they already lost the console war?

Are you looking forward to this goofy title? Shockingly, it’s not an Xbox Live Arcade game; it’ll be a boxed retail game.

Enjoy The Sims 3’s E3 debut trailer. There’s not much more to say that it basically states what’s promised - your Sims are no longer confined to their house or lot.

Joystiq scored an interview with the chief creative officer at iNiS the developer of Lips, Keiichi Yano. In the interview quite a bit of information came out about the game and just how it’s going to work: with your MP3 player, your Xbox, your friends, etc.

The good news is that Yano was explicit that both Zune’s and iPods will work with the game, allowing you to stream non DRMd (doesn’t matter the variety) music to your system so that you and your friends can sing more than just what the games comes with. In addition, you’ll be scored on your own songs and Lips will do all the vocal reducation as well, so you don’t have to worry about competing with Britney while you’re singing “Oops I did it Again” (you know you sing it in the shower…)

Other great news? The game will come with two microphones the second player can jump in at anytime by just wiggling their mic. Speaking of the mics, they’ll take two AA batteries and the life of said battery isn’t that bad. There are only three confirmed songs for the game, and iNiS doesn’t have problems if people use their mics for Rock Band or Guitar Hero, but Yano states it’s up to them if they want it to.

No word on how lyrics and score charts for the songs you provide but it’s been promised and will be “very compelling?”, or how the new avatars will be worked into the game. These are important things if Microsoft wants their push towards casual to work out, nevertheless I’m intrigued… If this comes out I don’t have to keep going to sleazy bars to get my karaoke on!

At the Activision conference Tuesday, the Director of Guitar Hero turned heads when he told attendees and reporters that competitor and third party instruments would work with Guitar Hero: World Tour. Great news for those of us who already have too many Fischer-Price instruments crowding our living rooms.

The news is big because Activision and Harmonix have been duking it out for control of the fake rock star market with their customers picking up the tab. As until this announcement, the competition’s controllers wouldn’t work on their games, requiring avid wanna-bes to collect two sets of the controllers to play both companies games.

Not anymore though! At least on Activision’s side. Customers are assured that Rock Band’s drum set will work on World Tour despite the fact it has one less drum. Activision says that the game will recognize the fact and adjust in-game accordingly; well, that’s one way to cheat at Guitar Hero: World Tour.

No word yet on whether Harmonix will be reciprocating. I hope so that way we as gamers win and it’s easier for you to hide all that stuff when the parents come over.

Big firms are starting to offer grants to look into just how games can assist patients and just what they are doing to those who play them. Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has announced $2 million in grants to study the effects and big-whigs in the medicine business, Humana Inc., Cigna Corp. and Kaiser Permanente are taking an interest supporting and sponsoring the 4 year old Games for Health conference which has seen its attendance more than double since its inception. These corporations are doing more than just looking into it; they’ve launched their own gaming projects in the last year.

The medical industry seems to be picking up on what causal observers and gamers have known for awhile but have been unable to prove until now. That games stimulate certain areas of the brain that deal with mood and happiness, and that can be used as part of a therapy regime.

Check out the entire article, for more on how games much like their users are growing up.

• Gamer’s average age has crept up to 35.
• One out of four gamers is over age 50
• Woman, 18 years of age or older, make up 33% of the gaming population
• Boys, 17 years or younger, make up only 18%

So maybe now some of the things you’ve been seeing at E3 begin to make sense? Microsoft’s push to make live more family and female friendly, several developers and publishers (EA, Eidos, etc.) new casual and dedicated female brands, Nintendo’s complete disregard for their “hard-core” audience. Yeah, all that makes sense when there are more woman and family men playing than there are angry, smelly, prepubescent teens…This is a big shift for the industry and it’ll be interesting to watch how games evolve as their audience does.

Other interesting facts to come out of the study have to do with parents; involvement in their children’s gaming:

• 94% of parents are present when games are purchased or rented.
• 88% of parents report always or sometimes monitoring the games their children play.
• 63% of parents believe games are a positive part of their children’s lives.

Feel free to use those statistics when some ignorant blow hard (like this guy or politicians grasping for a red herring) tries to tell you that games are dangerous to children and a threat to “our” way of life, then punch them in the face! Just kidding.