Smokin Shadowz

The Grunt from Halo, 'Splosion Man, and the guy from Trials HD among others are coming to Minecraft for Xbox Live Arcade. Update 1.7.3 will allow players to choose from the 8 skins already included in the game, as opposed to being randomly assigned a skin. Along with the update, players will also be able to purchase a pack of 40 additional skins, which include the skins outlined above, along with many others. posted at GameInformer View full article

Could Halo and Call of Duty one day be made under the same roof? Reuters reports that Vivendi has enlisted the help of a bank to speak with potential buyers for Activision Blizzard, and the list includes Microsoft, Time Warner, Tencent, and a group of private equity firms. Call of Chief: Master Warfare? "It's nothing official yet, but they've asked a bank to go and talk to possible buyers for Activision," a source close to Vivendi's board told the news agency. Vivendi presently owns a 60 percent stake in Activision Blizzard, and stands to raise close to $10 billion by offloading the company, the sources said. While Microsoft has the capital to purchase Activision Blizzard, the source told Reuters the Seattle technology giant is currently focused on building its next-generation Xbox. "They probably don't want to distract themselves too much, but they are the ones who, if they want to stay in games, would think about owning some of these big franchises, not just providing the consoles," the source said. As for Tencent, earlier this month, Activision Blizzard announced a deal with the Chinese company to bring Call of Duty: Online to China as a free-to-play game. However, a banker speaking to Reuters believes Tencent taking full ownership of Activision Blizzard would be a "big step" because of the companies' varying business models. "[Activision Blizzard] have two big franchises, Call of Duty on the console side and World of WarCraft on the MMOG (massively multiplayer online game) side. And China is not a big market for console businesses; online games are much bigger for various reasons," said the unnamed banker. A Microsoft representative told GameSpot, “Microsoft does not comment on rumors or speculation.” Despite Activision Blizzard's success with the Call of Duty series and World of Warcraft, Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter suggested in June that Vivendi might not have many suitors for the game maker. "The problem is there are no readily apparent buyers for Activision," Pachter said at the time. "The only option left to Vivendi is to lever up Activision's balance sheet and pay out all of its cash as a dividend, then spin the company off." [uPDATE] Pachter continues to hold this belief, telling GameSpot this morning that none of the above-mentioned companies are in a position to acquire Activision Blizzard. "None of those make sense," he said. "TenCent is the only one actively acquiring, and they make much smaller acquisitions. Time Warner has never spent more than $150 million on game investments. Microsoft would lose a lot of value if Call of Duty was Xbox only. None of these are buyers." It first came out that Vivendi was looking to offload Activision Blizzard in June, when a Bloomberg report stated Vivendi's board was planning to meet to discuss selling its majority stake in the game maker. Later that month, Vivendi CEO Jean-Bernard Levy was ousted for butting heads with the board regarding the firm's restructuring plans. And a new report suggested if a single buyer could not be found, the company would look to unload its shares on the open market. Article @ Gamespot.com http://www.gamespot....-report-6386412 View full article

The next game in Rocksteady Studios' Batman series will be a "highly stylized" prequel, Hollywood news site Variety reports today. The game will reportedly detail Batman's first encounter with the Joker, and is based on the Silver Age of DC comics from the 1950s. Rocksteady is looking back for the next Batman game, it appears. Gamers may want to temper their excitement for the project, as the site reports the new Batman game is not likely to arrive until 2014 at the earliest. Additionally, Mark Hamill said last October that he will not reprise his role as the Joker in the next game. As of press time, neither Warner Bros. nor Rocksteady Studios had responded to GameSpot's request for comment. Rocksteady Studios' first Batman game Arkham Asylum launched in 2009 to a strong critical reception. A sequel--Arkham City--debuted last October and shipped 6 million copies as of February. Article @ Gamespot.com http://www.gamespot....-report-6386420 View full article

A huge update for the Xbox 360 version Minecraft is available to download right now for free. The patch adds all kinds of new features, and fixes a number of problems. To download it, just boot up your game and the patch will download automatically. Here's the full list of fixes and additions: Features Added Pistons & Sticky Pistons. Added Stackable fences. Added Shears – required to get wool from sheep, and to collect leaf blocks. TNT needs Flint and Steel or Redstone to detonate. Redstone wire will now connect to a repeater. New textures for Cobblestone and Brick. Added Character Skin Selector to allow players to choose their skin from the default skins, or from Downloadable Content skin packs. Added lighting improvements (brought forward from 1.8.2 update) and snow & rain improvements. Added a save file cache to improve the speed of displaying the saves list. Added ban list functionality to allow players to self-ban from levels they feel contain offensive content. Added a ban list section to the How To Play menus. Added an option for the host to limit online games to only players in their friends list (no friends of friends). Added a seed display to the level load screen (requires existing levels to be saved out again to add the display). Changed the tooltip display setting to in-game tooltip display, so that tooltips always display in menus. Added the crosshair to the list of things affected by the opacity slider. On using the quickselect bar, the opacity of the quickselect, tooltips, splitscreen gamertag display, and crosshair will be set to 80, and will fade back down to the user opacity setting after 6 seconds of no quickselect bar use. Added some more Tips & Trivia to the loading/saving screen display. Tutorial World changes & additions Added optional tutorial for Pistons and Redstone. Added a self-building bridge to the castle using Pistons. Added some sugar cane, cactii and clay to the world. Added a few other things for players to discover. Fixes Fix for only the host being shown the pop-up when any player attempts to place lava near the spawn point. Fixed tooltip for Flint and Steel. Fix for Note blocks not showing notes. Fix for Leaderboard reads taking too long. Fix to block players re-entering a level they have been kicked from, until the level is restarted. Fix to stop players being able to join a game when they are not a friend of any player in the game. Fix for Netherracks re-appearing after being mined. Fix for a rare crash on entering the Nether. Fix for attacking enemies at a different level not damaging them. Fixed a problem causing some save games not to load. Removed Herobrine. Posted @ GAMEINFORMER View full article

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_4skHcCpT4&feature=g-all-u Full Fact Sheet: http://www.ign.com/w...rward-unto-dawn -- The series launches Oct. 5 and will be a series of 5 episodes. There will be an extended special edition cut on Nov. 6. IGN visits the set in Vancouver, BC to see the making of the Halo live action series, Forward Unto Dawn. See the first behind-the-scenes footage and production stills here. Head over to IGN for more Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn: http://tv.ign.com/ob...133/133596.html Original find by FιaϻϵGaϻϵ View full article

INFORMATION FROM G4TV. Gears of War: Judgment will be a prequel to the established Gears series and even though the game is still a ways from release, (March 19, 2013), we want to know what sets this game apart from the previous Gears games. That question was answered at the Gears of War: Judgment panel at Comic-Con 2012. Cliff Bleszinski and Rod Fergusson had several new videos and announcements to give gamers exactly the Gears info they wanted. Speaking of which, here are five ways Gears of War: Judgment will be different from Gears of War 1, 2 and 3. 1. Tone Judgment's new tone is credited to its new writers, Rob Alten and Todd Bissel, both established writers in Hollywood and in gaming. Their writing style and mature sensibility will add another layer to the game. Brutality and the melancholy are both core themes of the series, and these themes will shape Judgment as well. 2. Classes We already know OverRun will be class-based, but now we're learning more about each of the classes' roles. Each of the COG Defender classes will have specific and unique skills and loadouts. The Engineer will be able to build temporary sentries and repair vehicles. The soldier class can toss ammo crates, which will be vital for the rest of the team. The medic, who is female, can heal, and the Scout can access special sniping locations and add a tagging beacon. PREVIEW: Gears of War: Judgment Hands-on Impressions -- The Ups and Downs of Overrun Mode The Locust have their own classes too. When you play as the Locust, you'll start as a Ticker and work your way up to new Locust by earning points. Tickers will be able to chomp, dash, and self destruct. The Wretch can stun the COG with its scream. The Grenadier throws frag grenades. The Kantus is the Locust healer and can heal everyone in his immediate vicinity. The Blood Mount can carry any Grenadier and now Kantuses too. Corpsers are armored and can burrow. Ceripeed attacks and spits poison, and of course the Mauler who has a shield and a giant knife. This time, the shield spins. 3, Fun Beats Cannon Chainsaw lancers had not been invented during the time of Judgment and neither was the hammerburst. Both weapons will make an appearance in the game though. "Oh no! How could Epic make such a mistake?" It's not a mistake. Epic knows and appreciates the story's cannon, but in the end they feel it's more important for fun to win, than cannon. 4. Game Plays Faster The grenades are now on the left bumper, which might cause many gamers to freak out. Epic felt that pressing the d-pad, choosing the grenade, winding it up, and then launching it took too much time. (Epic took their sweet time to come to that realization.) A valid concern will be how to plant a grenade with this new format. VIDEO: Gears of War: Judgment "OverRun Mode Tutorial" Comic-Con 2012 Trailer 5. Dedicated Servers Epic learned a lot from the dedicated servers in Gears of War 3. So when it came to Gears of War: Judgment, Epic knew they had to repeat the success. So yes, Judgment will have them. Now that you know how Gears of War: Judgment will differ from Gears of War 3, are you sold? View full article

INFORMATION FOUND AT GAMESPOT [uPDATE] EA confirms next entry in shooter series, promises access to beta next year for those who preorder October's Medal of Honor Warfighter; "The Battlefield 3 story is still just the beginning," company says. This morning, Electronic Arts confirmed Battlefield 4, and said a beta for the new shooter will commence during fall 2013 for unspecified platforms. Gamers can get access to the trial period by preordering this October's Medal of Honor Warfighter. EA said more details regarding Battlefield 4 and its beta will be announced at a later date. Battlefield 4's beta will deploy next fall. Speculation concerning Battlefield 4 was sparked over the weekend, when EA's Origin webstore posted, and subsequently removed, promotional material for the game. [uPDATE] The official Battlefield website has been updated with a message from EA on Battlefield 4. The statement says the company has nothing further to share on Battlefield 4 at present, and talked up Battlefield 3 as a game still in its early stages. "Even with billions of bullets fired and millions of games played, we know the Battlefield 3 story is still just the beginning," reads a line from the statement. The existence of Battlefield 4 comes as little surprise. Battlefield 3 arrived in October 2011 to a warm critical reception and shipments of 15 million units. Additionally, EA Labels president Frank Gibeau said in November "there is going to be a Battlefield 4." Battlefield 4 may not be the only new franchise entry in the works. A report from May suggested series developer DICE was at work on a new entry in the spinoff series, Battlefield: Bad Company 3. Battlefield 4's beta will deploy next fall. View full article

FOUND AT EGMNOW Microsoft is looking for a graphics developer to work on the “next generation of game visuals in the Halo universe,” at 343 Industries. The job ad on Microsoft’s careers site reads: “Microsoft Studios 343 Industries is looking for an experienced graphics developer to help create the current and next generation of game visuals in the Halo universe. Work on one of the most exciting and creative properties in the industry; Work with the incredible 343 team to help drive the future of Halo.” The ad also mentions that DirectX 11 experience is a plus, and considering that the Xbox 360 doesn’t support it, that tends to suggest a next-generation title. Unless the next Halo is also being developed for PC, which is unlikely. We already know that two more Halo games are planned in 343′s new series, and it appears that Halo 5 will be on Microsoft’s next-generation console, according to this advert. View full article

se $50 bundle includes all 17 previous entries in RTS series updated for Windows 7 and Vista; early access to upcoming free-to-play C&C also included. From: GAMESPOT Electronic Arts today announced the Command & Conquer Ultimate Collection, a compilation of all 17 entries and expansion packs that have released in the real-time strategy game series' 17-year history. Due out in October for $50, the collection also packs in early access to the upcoming beta for the Frostbite 2-powered free-to-play Command & Conquer game, which arrives in 2013. 17 games from 17 years for $50. All games within the Command & Conquer Ultimate Collection have been updated for Windows 7 and Windows Vista. In the United States, it will be available online and at physical retailers. Availability for other regions was not specified. The Command & Conquer Ultimate Collection also includes a "Best of Command & Conquer" music compilation. The collection is composed of the following, redeemable via download code: Command & Conquer Command & Conquer The Covert Operations Command & Conquer Red Alert Command & Conquer Red Alert Counterstrike Command & Conquer Red Alert The Aftermath Command & Conquer Tiberian Sun Command & Conquer Tiberian Sun Firestorm Command & Conquer Red Alert 2 Command & Conquer Red Alert Yuri’s Revenge Command & Conquer Renegade Command & Conquer Generals Command & Conquer Generals Zero Hour Command & Conquer 3 Tiberium Wars Command & Conquer 3 Kane’s Wrath Command & Conquer Red Alert 3 Command & Conquer Red Alert 3 Uprising Command & Conquer 4 Tiberian Twilight View full article

INFORMATION FROM G4TV Ubisoft is apparently planning to support Assassin's Creed 3 with enough DLC to warrant a Season Pass, based on a letter that the publisher reportedly sent to GameStop locations. A photo of the note, snapped by a store employee, is posted at Kotaku and it appears to be legit given its resemblance to other materials that Ubisoft has sent out in support of the game. The letter confirms that Ubi created a "complementary development team" that has been tasked with building "post-launch episodic content," DLC that fans will be able to buy either a la carte or in one go, via a Season Pass. That Season Pass will apparently be available for pre-order soon, provided of course that this letter actually is the real deal. I find the mention of "episodic content" noteworthy though; it certainly suggests that the DLC plans involve more than just multiplayer maps. We'll all find out soon enough. Assassin's Creed 3 comes to PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and PC platforms on October 30, 2012. View full article