Remember the Gears of War action figures that are due in stores in late spring? You get to see them again in all their plastic glory, from Comic-Con no doubt. The detail in these toys is amazing. Like I complained earlier, just don’t expect them to survive a good ass-whooping.

Here’s something that would leave you thinking: Epic Games announced that its Unreal Engine 3 will be used for unannounced games in development by 2K Games, the publisher of recent bestseller Bioshock.
As you know, Bioshock uses a modified version of the Unreal Engine 3, so this news doesn’t come as a surprise at all. However, the most perplexing part of this tidbit is about those “unannounced games in development.”
What are those games?
You mean aside from rumors of Bioshock making its way to the PS3, 2K is coming out with another game that uses Unreal Engine 3? I guess they are.
Remember …read more

The Unreal Engine 3’s eye candy is about to get even prettier. How? By incorporating a global illumination system, that’s how. Epic Games and rendering technology developer Illuminate Labs have entered a deal, making global illumination a part of Unreal Engine 3.
Beast, Illuminate’s global illumination system, will allow the Epic engine to have more realistic lighting. This system takes into account not only the light that comes directly from a light source, but also cases where light rays from the same source are reflected by other surfaces.

If you can’t get the software updates that Gears of War for the PC is asking for, then be prepared to crash, and often. You’ll crash so often that you’d want to burn your copy of Gears. The factors that could probably stop you is the amount of time it took you to get the game (it’s two weeks late in our shores, and a year late for the PC), and the price tag.

Then again, I don’t know if not having the AMD Processor Driver for Windows XP version 1.3.2.16 is the main culprit for my frequent desktop crashes. …read more

We all know that PC gamers are getting Unreal Tournament 3 this very month, but the release date for the Playstation 3 version remains tentative. Mark Rein, vice president at Epic Games, told Eurogamer that the chances of getting the PS3 version this year is still pretty good.

“Right now we’re very close to a release candidate, and we should have it finished by the end of this week. Then we send it off and it’s just a matter of what happens from there.”

Clifford Bleszinski, Epic Games’ superstar designer, loves Bioshock. Cliffy B. loves it so much that he considers it his game of the year. Not Halo 3 (which isn’t out yet as of this writing), not Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, or whatever AAA title that’s set to come out late 2007.

The designer then proceeds to rave about specific parts of the game that I won’t spill.

We may be days away from the onslaught of Halo 3, and the Bungie shooter may break new sales records (then again, it may not). Halo multiplayer matches may again rule Xbox Live, but …read more

I’m pleasantly surprised to learn that a previous conjecture of mine was mistaken. When Mark Rein, vice president at Epic Games announced that Unreal Tournament 3 won’t have cross-platform play between the PC and PS3, I thought that it was for the best because PS3 users won’t stand a chance with the keyboard/mouse-wielding PC crowd.

You see, Mark Rein announced that the PS3 version of UT3 will support the keyboard and mouse scheme.

“I checked with Steve Polge and he said that YES we are supporting keyboard and mouse in Unreal Tournament 3 on PS3. He is confident we are …read more

Mark Rein, vice president at Epic Games, announced at the developer’s forums that Unreal Tournament 3 doesn’t use Games For Windows Live.

“We have not decided about cross platform play between PC and PS3. We’re not 100% sure that users want that feature but if we get time we’ll play around with it and see how it works. In the mean time we plan to be able to serve the PS3 from PC servers so that should help us gets lots of great servers going.”

The PS3 users won’t stand a chance, unless they sell out and use auto-aim.

At least, that’s what Official Xbox Magazine said in a new, six-page article. If you pick up the July issue, you’ll also get new details on the game, and it’s a doozy. Team Xbox also said that Unreal Tournament 3 is looking better that Gears of War.
Is such a claim possible? You and I know how purdy Gears of War looks.
Here’s the short of it: Epic Games, the makers of both games, has been working furiously to improve the Unreal Engine 3 since they released Gears of War late last year. Your proof: