The Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War II (RTS) multiplayer beta is now available to everybody who didn't get Soulstorm today over Steam. The beta is 5.4 Gigabytes or 5400 Megabytes. Dawn of War II will come out February 19th and will have a fairly robust campaign mode featuring the Space Marines. The Multiplayer portion allows you to play as the Space Marines, the Orcs, The Eldar, and the Tyranids.The game mimics Company of Heroes's cover system and now includes the ability to destroy cover, much to the delight of Gears fans everywhere. The game will include achievements however you cannot achieve any gamerscore during the beta. Read More...

With the new Friday the 13th movie coming in just a few weeks, the Gears team is hosting nearly 2 weeks of giveaways on Xbox Live starting February 1st. That's 65 daily prize packages and 13 grand prize packages.The daily packs come with: * Gears of War 2 video game soundtrack * Gears of War Aspho Fields novel * A 12" x 18" Gears of War 2 promotional poster autographed by members of the Epic development team * An in-game Golden Hammerburst and Lancer weapon The grand prize packs come with: * A Samsung 40-inch 1080p flat panel LCD HDTV * A Locust Bust * A red Xbox 360 Wireless Controller * A Marcus Fenix bronze statue * Gears of War 2 video game soundtrack * Gears of War Aspho Fields novel * A 12" x 18" Gears of War 2 promotional poster autographed by members of the Epic development team * An in-game Golden Hammerburst and Lancer weaponTo register, you either need to go on Xbox.com or download the 13 Days of Gears Registration Gamer Picture from the Marketplace. The rest of the info can be found here. Read More...

Our friend Six Okay over at GearsOfWar.com made an update yesterday afternoon telling everyone that there has been an update to Gears of War 2. Here is the breakdown of what's included in the fix: Exploit Fixes: Crabwalking, invisibility, weapon-slide, melee through walls, unlimited ammo. General Fixes: Shotgun and Boomshot updates, meatshield chainsawing updates, team communication, Insane gamer pic award. Balancing: Planted proximity grenade updates, increased quitting penalties, spawn protection, flamethrower stopping power. Improvements: Annex uses execution rules, achievement progression in the War Journal, added 7 DLC-based achievements worth 175 gamerscore. Read More...

A while back, I posted about a Gears of War 2 patch coming later this month. Now it turns out that coming along with the patch are seven new achievements. No official release date has been said, but should go live once the patch is released. All seven equal up to 175 points, mostly focused on the flashback and combustible maps. Go here to see more about it. Read More...

Warner Bros. Interactive has just announced a single player demo for F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin for the PS3, 360 and PC on January 22nd. For PS3 owners, the demo will only be available to Qore subscribers and PC users are required to go to www.whatisfear.com. The demo should be pretty much like the first one, you play through a level, some creepy things will happen, you know.***F.E. Read More...

Microsoft's Robbie Bach announced during their company's CES Keynote that a demo for Halo Wars will be available for download February 5th. Robbie has also announced that instead of Halo Wars being released March 3rd, they are now moving it to February 28th. Bach has also spoken about Halo 3 ODST still in the works and will in fact be out later this year, probably around October. More on the CES Keynote can be found here. Read More...

Bioshock can 'do a Star Wars', says 2K boss So one thing I hate to see in a franchise, be it a Movie, TV, or Video Game one, is when they make such a huge hit with the first one that they turn around and churn out loads of crap to try and make a quick buck while the franchise is still in the height of popularity. I won't disagree that it isn't a bad way to make money. People will shell out for a sequel thinking it will be as good as the first. Read More...

Mark Rein from Epic has responded to everyone's complaints about all the glitches in bugs in the game such as equipping the shield with a 2-hand weapon, Lancers with infinite ammo, invisible shields and so on. That's all going to end soon. Posted on the Gears forums is all the details of what's coming in this patch."We're fixing a whole bunch of online exploits. For example we've fixed the ability to wield an invisible shield, melee through some walls, gain infinite Lancer ammo and equip a shield and a two-handed weapon simultaneously plus many more. Read More...

Spore Get A Spore™ Sculpture Created Ever created something in Spore™ and said, "Well I'd love to have a physical version of that." Be it a real pet or maybe for the realist, a small statue of it. Don't lie to yourself. You know you have ever since World of Warcraft™ characters were able to be created through cosplay or sculpture. Read More...

Turns out the Europeans are getting Halo Wars nearly a week before North and South America. Halo Wars will release in Japan and Asia on February 26th, in Europe on February 27th and North and South America have to wait till the Third of March Pre-order the game at a participating retailer and you'll get an exclusive in-game Warthog with flame decals, whether you buy the Limited Edition or not. SHIIIIINNNYY. Read More...

This review is long overdue, but with a very busy schedule lately, it’s better late than never.Gears of War 2 is Epic Games sequel to the acclaimed original, which was one of the best games to ever grace the XBox 360. Will part 2 rise above its predecessor or fall to the way side of sequels that can't capture that same feeling of the original? After sitting down and getting some good playing time in to the campaign and single player, I came away feeling this was Gears of War 1.5. Read More...

Two weeks after the release of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, Lucasarts announced that they were working on two expansion packs for the game. The first of these downloadables arrived this week. The pack however, is primarily a visually oriented download as it gives players the ability to use ten new character skins. The cost for the character pack is $4.99 on the PlayStaion Store and 400 Microsoft Points ($5. Read More...

Gamestop is getting ready to launch a nationwide for Call of Duty: World at War. The tournament starts this Friday, featuring one-on-one, single elimination style rounds. The best players from each store will go on the district semifinals on January 16th, then the reginal finals on the 23rd, leading up to the championship on the 27th on the deck of the USS Midway aircraft carrier in San Diego. Grand prize is $2,500 dollars in cash and a free trip to San Diego. Head over to http://www. Read More...

Halo Wars Game Footage So after seeing and hearing a bit about this at Comic Con 2008, I've been searching for anything more on this. Finally, there has been a video placed out with a little bit of everything in the game. A little FMV. A little Game Mechanics. A Little Game Play. And all of this makes it look a little interesting. For the most part it looks like a different version of StarCraft or WarCraft. With just a Halo skin slapped over it. Read More...

Fun Fact: World of Warcraft's player subscription base is equal to Ohio's population according to the 2007 census estimates. Even before the release of next major expansion Wrath of the Lich King, Blizzard has much to brag about. After Age of Conan and WAR Online both have released and Blizzard still holds a strong grasp over the MMORPG market, an ever-growing gaming scene, and has now reached a player base of 11 million strong.   Quoted from Blizzard: IRVINE, Calif. - October 28, 2008 - Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. Read More...