Today at the Microsoft Press Conference at E3, Joe Staton from Bungie demoed Halo 3: ODST. It started as a pod dropped to New Mombassa containing "The Rookie." These specially trained fighters have access to new weapons like a low-light vision modes for the visor and the famous scoped pistol from Halo 1.

As the story of the game progresses the player switches perspectives between different Orbital Drop Shock Troopers with their own abilities. It will include a new cooperative game mode called Firefight that will be available on September 22 when the game launches.

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Two years ago Ubisoft unveiled Splinter Cell Conviction. And then, with the skill of a master spy, it vanished. Well, Sam Fisher is back and this time he's bringing his boom stick.

Forget what little you know about Conviction, only the technology behind the original concept remains. Every other aspect of the gameplay has been re-imagined and retooled. In fact, forget what you know about Splinter Cell in general. Conviction is meant to be a true evolution of the series. While it's based off the core principals of the Splinter Cell franchise, Ubisoft redefined the gameplay to such a level that to some it may be unrecognizable.


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Kojima took the stage at Microsoft's press conference and dropped a major announcement:

Remember all those teasers we saw over the past month? It wasn't the new PSP game. It was, in fact, a completely new series in the Metal Gear franchise.

Titled Metal Gear Solid: Rising, the game appears to mainly focus on the character Raiden, as there were no shots of Solid Snake at all in the extremely vague announcement teaser shown.

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By the time you read this, Valve will have announced the existence of Left 4 Dead 2 at Microsoft's E3 press conference. By watching the announcement trailer, you'll discover that there are new characters, special zombies, and even melee weapons like a chain saw. But if you want to learn more, read on, because we were at Valve last week to actually play through one of the sequel's campaigns (the E3 demo only features the first two levels of the campaign that we played), and we got all the bloody details.

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According to a 1 vs 100 Twitter page, a US beta for the Xbox Live Primetime games service is planned and will be announced within the next 24 hours. Of course, as natural skeptics, we bothered Major Nelson to confirm the account is actually affiliated with the upcoming game. According to Major, "The 1v100 team put that up. So, yes it's real."

However, when contacted for comment, Microsoft PR hastily denied the Twitter account was connected to the game and insisted no announcement was planned. Thus, the miscommunication parade from Microsoft continues. Over the last month, Microsoft's communication guns have been firing blanks, beginning with accidentally claiming a Wolverine demo was available weeks before it was actually scheduled, followed by the incorrect pricing of Lode Runner and Blazing Birds and mistakenly categorizing Bionic Commando Rearmed as this week's Xbox Live Deal.

Joystiq has since contacted Microsoft again, hoping that both hands of its communication arms consult and come to some kind of mutual conclusion.

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Bizarre Creations' Ged Talbot admitted that the developer's long-running, Xbox (and Xbox 360) exclusive racing series Project Gotham Racing was beginning to lose its sizzle, according to an interview with CVG. Talbot explained, "By the time we got to PGR4 I certainly felt that the time was right to move on and do different things." That's a desire the developer will be fulfilling with its upcoming "Mario Kart meets Forza" racer, Blur -- a project Talbot calls "a breath of fresh air."

Yes, they're breaking up the monotony of their worn out racing franchise, and rejuvenating their stagnant creative juices by generating a totally new ... racing franchise. Bold!

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Listen, we know you want to freak out after reading that headline, we do too. But let's work through this together, OK? GamerBytes says it spotted Secret of Monkey Island, the first in Ron Gilbert's revered adventure series, listed for Xbox 360 (likely XBLA) on the website of the German USK ratings board. The listing -- which actually called the game a "Special Edition" -- shows Activision as having some involvement, but likely because it handles European publishing duties for LucasArts.

However, the only evidence we have of the game now is GamerBytes' screengrab, as the listing's apparently been pulled. We're hoping against hope it was removed not because the listing was in error, but because it popped up a bit earlier than the companies behind it would have liked. You may now commence the freakout.

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Scans of the latest issue of Game Informer detail controller options and gameplay for Activision's upcoming mixmaster sim, DJ Hero. According to the scans (via Raging Gamer), gameplay will feel at home for Guitar Hero fans, setting tunes upon a three-note track with the outside tracks (green and blue) crossfading left and right. As a note track shifts in position, players must use the crossfader switch on the controller to correctly play the note (think of it as drawing within the lines).

Similar to drum fill sections in Rock Band, DJ Hero allows players to customize certain sections of gameplay with an effects dial on the controller. Certain note tracks will ask players to scratch the controller's platter to successfully complete the note. Also, a rewind setting allows gamers to replay sections of a tune and, of course, the game includes a Star Power-esque multiplier (dubbed "Euphoria"), activated by a button. It can be swapped to accommodated left handed players.

After we found out earlier today that Bizarre Creations' Blur would be speeding to store shelves this fall, we thought that'd be all the Blur news the game's publisher, Activision, was ready to drop in a single day. Turns out we were wrong, as a handful of screens for the new racer are clearly available at Gamersyde.

The cars are plenty nice and the brightness has apparently been turned up to 11, but most importantly, we get an early glimpse of those "Mario Kart meets Forza" special effects. Seems as though electricity is the effect of the day, as nearly every shot we've seen features fractured blue light from end to end. No oil slicks that send cars careening to their doom? No carefully placed explosive barrels intended for multiple flips? For shame, Activision. For shame.

Attention Dragon Ball fans, we have some news that will probably make all kinds of sense to you. Daizex.com noticed reports of new games set in the Dragon Ball universe for the Wii, Xbox 360 and PS3. First up, French site Wiiz.fr has magazine scans showing off a new Wii game based on the original Dragon Ball series, apparently entitled Dragon Ball World: Big Adventure, a 2D/3D affair in which Sangoku (who?) faces the Red Ribbon Army (whatever that is).

Meanwhile, Xbox Evolved reports that a new Dragon Ball Z game is on the way for Xbox 360 and PS3 entitled Dragon Ball Z: Raging Blast. Daizex.com suspects that the game is more closely related to something called Sparking! than Burst Limit. Sparking!, evidently, is the Japanese name for the Budokai Tenkaichi series. Or something.

We don't really understand anything else, but we're sure it's all very exciting.

Ubisoft Montreal's Sebastien Puel, producer on Assassin's Creed 2, is in charge of 450 people. Those 450 people, however, are in charge of bringing Ezio Auditore de Firenze to life before the Ubisoft-imposed March 10 deadline arrives.

Puel claims the group is roughly three times the size of the original crew of folks employed to create AC1 and that, among those folks, 75 percent have been kept on board from the nascent team. "Making [Assassin's Creed] from A to Z took around four years ... it's a very good thing we are keeping most of the core members who envisioned the first Assassin's Creed," he says, adding that the original team had "thousands of ideas" left out of the original project, ready to be implemented this time around. We've made no secrets about out love for the original and would be lying if we didn't express our excitement over getting to play it in a few weeks at E3 2009. Hopefully not all 450 developers will be demonstrating the game for us.

It seems that Bethesda is still trying to dig itself out of the pit it fell into with the bug-filled initial release of Fallout 3's "The Pitt" DLC. After pulling the episode from Xbox Live, then releasing a "fixed" version of the content, it appears that some players are still experiencing issues, including freezes. Now the publisher is promising yet another fix.

"Since The Pitt went back up on Xbox LIVE last Wednesday, we've received feedback that some folks were experiencing freezing issues while trying to access The Pitt," reads an official statement on Bethesda's blog. "We're working with Microsoft to get a version of The Pitt up that corrects the aforementioned freezing issue. Once the content is up and available, we'll let you know."

Bethesda thanks Fallout fans in its post for their "support, patience and feedback" -- or, as the latter is otherwise known, hundreds of angry forum posts.

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Download Now (03/29/2009)

GDC 09 has come and gone and we have all the info you'll need. We dive into Alan Wake, Dead Rising 2, Rock band 2 DLC, Bungie's plan for the future with Halo 3, Max Payne 3 date announced, COD 4: MW2, and more. We breakdown some topics in a PTi Format and show you why your life really isn't that bad compared to others. I give you details from Germany and Switzerland while on Spring Break. Sit back, relax and enjoy this weeks show.

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Mass Effect 2 is out there; it's been officially named, the teaser trailer has released and it's undoubtedly only a matter of time before the second part of BioWare's sci-fi saga is unravelled in full, either on the internet or in magazine land.

Before that though, let's piss in the wind a little and rummage through the interviews and PR blurbs to get an idea about the second game. Possible spoilers ahead then...

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