The long-since cancelled Xbox version of TimeShift will be replaced by another one, after all. Previously announced as a Xbox 360 console-exclusive (and also heading for the PC), Sabre Interactive's chronologically challenged shooter has eventually been confirmed for the PS3 as well, during Sony's "Gamer's Week" event in San Diego, California. All three versions are scheduled for release in autumn 2007 by Vivendi's Sierra Entertainment division.

"Sierra Entertainment and Sabre Interactive are changing the way gamers play FPS games by giving them the ultimate weapon - Time", said Al Simone, SVP of Global Marketing for Sierra Entertainment. "TimeShift will compete with the best shooter games of the year on any platform and will offer PlayStation 3 gamers a visceral new experience unlike any they have ever seen or played before."

The PlayStation 3 version of TimeShift promises to give players a robust multiplayer experience, featuring online shootouts for up to 16 players, across seven game modes. In addition, players will be able to customise their own game mode using over 60 options, and choosing from 14 multiplayer maps.

In case you've been living in some temporal hole until now, TimeShift is a first-person shooter game that immerses the player in a deep storyline, whose main character is equipped with a unique quantum suit that can slow, stop and even reverse the flow of time. The game has been in development for quite a few years by now, having been abandoned by its former publisher Atari last year. And while we haven't seen any gameplay trailers lately, this recent TimeShift cinematic movie should give you a rough idea about the game's feel.

UPDATE: Timeshift Made Kotaku's Brian Crecente Shift His Pants.

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Age of Empires III Expands Again, With Asian Dynasties

Another freshly announced expansion will be dedicated to Ensemble Studios' third entry in their Age of Empires series. But unlike the previous productions, this new Age of Empires III expansion is actually being developed by another studio... Big Huge Games, if you can believe it! Indeed, the makers of Rise of Nations and last year's Rise of Legends have joined forces with "the enemy". This alliance starts to make sense when you think that both Ensemble's and Big Huge's titles are published by Microsoft, and so will this new one - called Age of Empires III: The Asian Dynasties.

Needless to say, The Asian Dynasties will switch the battle to the wild-wild East, where players will take command of new Oriental civilizations. In addition to this, the expansion will provide new content and several new gameplay elements that include new ways of winning and trading, random map styles that feature remixes of classic Age of Empires game styles, and 15 new Asian "Wonders".

Age of Empires III: The Asian Dynasties also touts itself as a Games for Windows title with "easier installation, improved reliability and support for key Windows Vista features, including the Games Explorer and Parental Controls". What every hardcore strategy fan has been wishing for, no doubt.

So far, Microsoft only issued a single screenshot from The Asian Dynasties, but they have all the time in the world to add plenty more until the autumn of 2007, when this second expansion is due for release. Until then, we can all ironically ponder the question: so is the next Rise of Nations game coming from Ensemble?

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The creators of the GTR racing simulation series from SimBin are gearing up for their next release, not surprisingly a driving title once again. In little over a month from now, they plan to expand last year's RACE: The WTCC Game with its first add-on, called Caterham. As the title implies, this will be dedicated to the classic sportscars made by the Caterham-based British manufacturer, who this year celebrates 50 years of production of the famous Lotus / Caterham 7 model.

RACE: Caterham will give fans a total of 60 individual new cars / car skins based on some of the most exciting models of the Caterham sports car range - such as the Caterham CSR 200, CSR 260 or the CSR 320 Concept, the later being a concept version with a grueling 320hp - plus two new tracks: the legendary circuit of Imola and the former GP-track of Estoril. You can find more info about all of these on the expansion's website, and see some screenshots in our local gallery.

Furthermore, RACE: Caterham will add new functions that also affect the original RACE game, including improved performance scalability, a performance monitor to help the player find the best possible graphical settings and a new controller interface with more options.

For those who already have the original game, the Caterham expansion pack will be available for purchase through digital download (via Steam), while newfound fans will be able to buy a two-disc bundle at retail, containing both the original game and the expansion. According to the official website, publisher Eidos plans to release Caterham on June 22, 2007.

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S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Sequel(s) To Be Revealed At E3 2007

So how did you like the ending(s) of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.? Not too disappointing, or bleak, or anything? Are you in for another round? If so, then just you wait for this year's downsized E3 event, because that's where GSC Game World plans to reveal new titles in the series. That's right, several new S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games are already in the works at the Ukranian developer, thogh for the time being we can only wonder what they will play like... or in what century they'll come out.

GSC's latest communique simply states that "the studio is about to announce several subsequent new products in the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. universe already at the upcoming E3 Media & Business Summit-2007 to take place July 11-13 in Santa Monica". Should any of you plan to attend the event, the GSC Game World stand will be located in Barker Hangar, booth #426. Well, looks like E3 2007 might not be so boring after all.

The devs provided no hints whatsoever as to the nature of these new STALKER games, but if I were to take a wild guess, a direct shooter sequel and an alternate strategy game sound pretty plausible - also taking into account the studio's past forays into the RTS genre with the Cossacks series. What little else was announced, you can read below:

"We are very happy of the players' positive reaction to S.T.A.L.K.E.R. all over the world. This fills us with confidence the team is on the right track and adds us strength to go for next exciting accomplishments. It will be very soon that we present our new interesting ideas and solutions", said GSC Game World's CEO Sergiy Grygorovych.

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Barely did the rumour mill start treading, and Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) is already putting it to official rest. Earlier this week, news emerged that Sigil Games Online had fired many of its developers all of a sudden, raising serious concerns over the fate of its seriously flawed MMORPG, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. And while we still don't know for sure who is to blame for this sad outcome (some blame Brad McQuaid, the studio's ex-boss), at least we have official conrimation that Sigil - along with Vanguard - was indeed acquired by SOE.

SOE president John Smedley made the announcement on the Station.com forums, also acknowledging that, while some former devs have been left on the outside, around 50 of them will be hired back by SOE, "in order to insure that Vanguard continues to grow".

"We plan on supporting Vanguard for many years to come", promised Smedley, "and you can expect many content updates as part of your subscription. Down the line we will of course be coming out with new expansion packs, but right now the focus is on making sure Vanguard is running the way it should be."

SOE has also inaugurated the general Vanguard forums (it was about time), and they also promise to listen more closely to what the community has to say in the future, and not make the same mistakes as with the infamous Star Wars Galaxies NGE "upgrade".

There is one bad news, however, and it's the one we were most afraid of: they hired back Brad McQuaid, as consultant to SOE and creative advisor for Vanguard. They never learn...

And finally, WarCry has word that Sigil's other co-founder, Jeff Butler, together with a team of five developers is moving to SOE's San Diego office to prototype a potential new MMO project. Note the italics!

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Halo 3 Beta Begins With Release Date Announcement // UPDATE #2

Speaking of popular Xbox 360 games, those "few" of you waiting for Halo 3 can finally breathe more easily, because Microsoft announced today the first solid (and hopefully definitive) release date for Bungie's upcoming shooter. And it looks like those "September" rumours were right: if all goes well, Halo 3 will launch on September 25, 2007 in North America, and just one day later in Europe, already promising to "shatter day-one entertainment sales records". There's not much we can argue about that.

The news conveniently coincides with the beginning of the game's over-hyped mutliplayer beta testing phase today, which offers lucky participants the chance to frag around several levels, with some new weapons, vehicles and game types. You can still enter the beta, by the way, if you're willing to buy one of those "specially marked copies of Crackdown". The fun will be short-lived, however, as the beta will already come to an end three weeks from now, on June 7.

Microsoft's Peter Moore (corporate vice president) believes that Halo 3 will mark not only the most important game release of the year, but also "the biggest entertainment event of the year":

"At launch we intend to deliver a finale that will go down in entertainment history and leave people around the world with an experience that will be shared and enjoyed for years to come."

Again, not much we can argue about that (yet), so we'll just let the marketing do the talking, for the time being.

UPDATE: Halo 2 for the PC is getting pwned as we speak. Aaand again, not much we can argue about that either. That's what you get for releasing expired games.

UPDATE #2: The Halo 3 beta kicked off to a bad start yesterday, at least for those who bought Crackdown and found they couldn't download the damn thing. After some understandable commotion around the community (fans freaking out, stuff like that), Microsoft issued a statement claiming to have fixed the problem. But here's the best part: as an extra apology, they are extending the Halo 3 beta closure date from June 6 to June 10, 11:59 PM PDT. That's... super. [17.05.2007, 16:04]

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Midnight Club: Los Angeles Announced For PS3 And Xbox 360

Back in 2003, in a time when EA's Need for Speed series had already begun to piss off a lot of fans, Rockstar's Midnight Club II was there to take them into a vast open world of urban racing. Unlike NFS: Underground, released later that year, MC2 gave players a lot more freedom of "exploration", a more diverse racing experience (think motorcycles), and arguably more fun challanges. More "GTA", in a way. But with all that, unfortunately, also came a lot of frustration, and the game ultimately felt like it could have been so much more!

Could the fourth Midnight Club installment be "it"? We sure hope so. And thanks to Rockstar's latest announcement, as of today we have a name to stick our hopes onto: Midnight Club: Los Angeles. It's headed for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, and it's coming in early 2008 they say.

The name alone might instil some concern regarding the size of the game, seeing how Los Angeles was but one of the three cities in Midnight Club II, alongside Paris and Tokyo. However we hope that the series' devs from Rockstar San Diego will compensate with a lot more polish, should they shrink the game world.

Of course, we're only guessing here, but that's all we can do for now, in lack of solid details about Midnight Club: Los Angeles. The best we could find in Rockstar's communique is that the game promises to deliver "a truly immersive next-generation racing experience that is second to none". I don't know about you, but that doesn't say squat to me. And neither does the following statement given by Sam Houser, founder and executive producer of Rockstar Games:

"With Midnight Club: Los Angeles, Rockstar San Diego looks to once again push the boundaries and expectations of what a racing game can be. Rockstar San Diego has always been the technology leader in delivering the ultimate racing experience, and with this game, they are looking to re-define the idea of a completely immersive racing game experience, both offline and online."

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As we wait for two of the most popular multiplayer games on Xbox Live to be released for the PC, irony has it that we first get to play the PC demo of Lost Planet - released on the Xbox 360 just a few months ago - while there's still no demo for Bungie's Halo 2 PC port, which is due for release next week. With the risk of repeating ourselves, that's two and a half bloody years later than the original Xbox version! Hmmpf... no matter, let's just get to the point.

So, as Capcom kindly informed us late last week, and again today, they have just released a PC demo that includes the content from both of the game's earlier Xbox 360 demos, for single- and multiplayer. Aside from that, it also features a performance benchmark tool, showing your computer's wootness (or crappyness) - measured as usual in frames-per-second - during a flyby sequence.

The Lost Planet PC demo is available for download from nVidia in two variants: one for DirectX 9 (i.e. Windows XP), and one for DirectX 10 (Windows Vista). Pick whichever suits you best, they're both about the same size, 370 MB give or take...

If you're getting some errors at launch on DirectX 9, try downloading the latest DX version from Microsoft's website. Although I for one was still unable to run it afterwards, for reasons that might have something to do with my lack of recent hardware upgrades. Bah, consoles aren't that evil after all.

The final game is expected to ship on the PC at the end of June.

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How long's it been? Ten, almost eleven years, since we've been dying to poke Lara Croft with our own two hands? As much as I hate to admit it, that may not happen anytime soon. However, we'll soon be able to poke her with something else: the Wii. With a capital "W", ya perverts! On this joyous day, Eidos enlarged our hype with a most exciting news, confirming that a Nintendo Wii version of Lara Croft Tomb Raider: Anniversary is already "well into development".

The Wii version - assumingly developed by Crystal Dynamics - will follow at some point after the PSP version, which in turn will be released shortly after the game's PC and PlayStation 2 versions. These last two should come out on June 1, as announced by the publisher just a few of days ago.

Accompanying the news is the following teasing statement:

"The Nintendo Wii is a hugely innovative games console and we wanted to make a special version of Anniversary to appeal to Wii owners", said Kathryn Clements, Senior Brand Manager, Tomb Raider. "The Wiimote & Nunchuck controller allows Wii gamers to control Lara in brand new, unique ways, and there are plenty of new features, to be revealed soon, which will ensure Anniversary really hits the spot - literally."

Oh yeah, Lara can hit my spot anytime!

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Serious Sam 3 And A New Military Shooter Coming From Croteam

It's no secret that Croteam is working on Serious Sam 3, just like it's no secret that they're working on another project as well: this is something that's been known since late 2005. But this week we are finally getting some hints about the kind of game this "other project" of theirs is going to be like! For starters, we're going to point out the obvious and say that both games are being developed using Croteam's proprietary Serious Engine 3 technology, which they've been tinkering with for quite some time now.

Regarding Serious Sam 3, we don't expect anything short of the explosive madness that blew us away in the first two chapters, even though we don't actually have any specific details about where the third part will take us. But there's still plenty of time to find out more about it, because it looks like Serious Sam 3 may be coming after Croteam's other game - a military tactical-action shooter, as they say:

"What we can say for now is that it's a 'military tactical-action shooter', which is powered by our Serious Engine 3 technology. The game is set in the present; with 'in your face' action and requiring gamers to think before shooting. The technology allows the player the impression that he is at the very heart of the action. Audio-visual components of the game will encompass modern warfare using realistic, bloody and violent moments together with 'fast-paced' action. Using the Serious Engine 3, the game will have a lot of detail, from realistic metal materials, to the 'cloth' system to animated character faces."

This brief introduction was part of a recent interview with Croatian magazine GamePlay (as summarized on Seriously!), which also reveals that Croteam tried (and failed) to partner with id Software, in order to work on a sequel to one of their series. While the devs wouldn't go into detail about any of their projects, publisher Gamecock Media Group announced today that they will be publishing Croteam's "as-yet-untitled game". Again, no details, just a vague release date - 2009 - and an equally vague platforms line-up: "Windows PC and specific next-gen consoles"... Oh, and three screenshots!

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