Ever wanted to know how it feels like to be in the polished shoes of a president's bodyguard? Well, here's your chance not only to get a glimpse of this excruciating and tremendously consuming profession, but also to spread some bullets and pain here and there, while you're at it.



A new first-person action game, called Secret Service, is being announced by Activision, and while it may not play by the most original scenario, it can certainly provide tactical pew pew fans with lots of enjoyment. I mean, what can be more fun for a country-loving computer gamer than to save his president's ass from a quick and... “unscheduled” terrorist attack?

Activision promises a good all-around storyline that will keep us focused on the target at hand, with plots, twists and other yada-yada, known locations, plus the possibility to solve objectives by either using brute force, or using more... orthodox methods. As in non-letal. The game is planned for PC, PlayStation 2 and X360, and will be released at the end of the year.

I don't really know if I should laugh or cry when I look at this - not to mention the fact that I am still not getting it. Blizzard is, was and will be one of the top notch game producers ever invented by loli Jesus, alongside BioWare, Black Isle, 3DO and Westwood, so I usually do not question their motives when they decide something in their marketing strategy. But their latest thing seems a little... curious.



BlizzCon, the almighty place where all geeks meet either to jerk on some naked Blood Elven chick, either to discuss Blizz's future products, was the place where they announced that Starcraft 2 will actually be a trilogy, singleplayer-wise. As in, three different games. As in, no, you will not get them all-in-one. As in, HUH?

Because of the fact that its storyline is supposed to be “of epic proportions”, the game cannot be shipped just in a mere ONE bundle, so we will get a standalone campaign for each and every race. Terran: Wings of Liberty, where our old pal Jimmy Raynor does his usual “I have no place in this freaking universe” thing, Zerg: Heart of the Swarm, where Kerrigan might actually leak those naked pictures of her when she was young, and Protoss: Legacy of the Void, where the Protoss will probably be as gay and retarded as ever. With a new Matriarch. Each campaign will feature up to 30 missions, all, of course, fully enjoyable.

We all know them. We have all heard about them. The menace of social life, the top of the geekdom iceberg, the Laetitia Casta of gaming and the laughing stock for all those cheapscake Romanians who would rather cut down their penises and create illegal (singleplayer) servers all for themselves, than to buy and pay a monthly fee for an original game - they are called MMOs.

And, by God, we have tons of them. We have free MMOs, we have expensive MMOs, we have cute MMOs, we have violent MMOs, we have porn MMOs, hell, we even have that thing called Age of Conan, trying to prove for sometime now (and failing) that it is not a pile of crap. Yah, we have them all.

In the recent light of patch 1.02, Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning (which I have bought and played up until level 2, alt-tabbing to my Sunwell raid after that), seems to be doing pretty good so far, just weeks after release. Impressive. The ladies at Mythic have just announced that their little baby hit 750,000 registered users, all mad fighters for law, justice, Waaargh, and various other Warhammer related shit. Like candies.



This game holds surprisingly good so far, with solid core gameplay, good RvR arousement and (early) ejaculation, and while we await for the much promised (and not released at the start) content, we'll just have to take a look at Wrath of the Lich King and Mines of Moria, the new expansions for the other two MMOs out there. And for the awesomeness of Age of Singleplayerconan, lol.

1UP scoop.

With infinite kindness, the girls at Steam are now accepting preorders for the very much anticipated Far Cry 2 and, to convince their customers even further into buying the game, the whole package comes with an amazing 5 USD discount. Just the right amount of money to buy that Bentley you have always dreamed of.



Alongside this, Steam is also swiftly delivering copies of Xpand Rally Xtreme, plus an updated version of their client, just to make people a little fuzzy inside. Far Cry 2 will ship on October 22.

Now that Fallout 3 is Gold and ready to ship into stores soon, the dearly beloved folks at Bethesda decided to let us know what to expect, when it comes to hungry system resource management. So, if you are still childishly thinking this game will be any good, or, at least, that it will keep a minor portion of the REAL Fallout... touch, then feel free to admire its requirements, for the PC Version.

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 Continue reading 'Fallout 3 System Requirements'...

An official press release just came out recently, stamping a North American and European release date for Mines of Moria, the (almost) awaited expansion pack for Lord of the Rings Online. Tolkien fans from all over the world will be able to bask in awe, as the game comes with new additions, items, things, a texture of two, all of which can be admired while players will try to retake Khazad-dûm from the minions of Saruman.



Even more, for the European preorders, the game comes with exclusive bonus items AND a lifetime membership for only 149.99 EUROS. I wish other MMOs would take on the same marketing strategy, but alas, other MMOs make enough money just the way things are right now. The expansion is set to launch on November 18.

Since we were previously talking about Japan, games, and various other things (actually, we always talk about Japan and various other things), let's take a look at some figures from the Tokyo Game Show, courtesy of Gameindustry.biz.

It seems that this here event is set to break tons of records, including the number of games exhibited – no less than 879 titles, for every platform available. To get into even more details, we have around 19 percent DS games (actually, 18.7, but who's counting), 18 percent mobile games, and around 17.5 PC games. The top of the bottom is gloriously held by the Playstation 3, with a mere 3.5 percent.



And while we're here, let's get into genres. Most of the titles (around 20 percent) will obviously be action-adventure oriented (no wonder, kids seem to like easy stuff these days), with the roleplaying awesomeness of true gaming reaching only 9 percent, followed by simulation and puzzle titles.

If you are still shivering in pain and agony, wondering if your soon-to-be number one reason for computer addiction will work on your computer, fear not, because almighty Blizzard, in their infinite and candid lust to satisfy their customers, have revealed the system requirements for the upcoming World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King expansion. Here we have it:

Processor:
Minimum: Intel Pentium 4 1.3 GHz or AMD Athlon XP 1500+
Recommended: Dual-core processor, such as the Intel Pentium D or AMD Athlon 64 X2

Memory:
Minimum: 512 MB RAM (1GB for Vista users)
Recommended: 1 GB RAM (2 GB for Vista users)

Video:
Minimum: 3D graphics processor with Hardware Transform and Lighting with 32 MB VRAM Such as an ATI Radeon 7200 or NVIDIA GeForce 2 class card or better
Recommended: 3D graphics processor with Vertex and Pixel Shader capability with 128 MB VRAM Such as an ATI Radeon X1600 or NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT class card or better

For the Mac specs, check the official post here.



Speaking of satisfied customers, I would just like to thank Blizzard for the incredible amount of fun it gave me in the English Beta. It was so awesome, testing that log-in screen for 90% of my time... I guess I actually had sex with that damn dragon by now.

It was about time, I'd say. After the previous Xbox 360 and PS3 demos, not to mention the full versions of Mercenaries 2: World in Flames - all of which were released over the last month - we're now treated to the PC demo of Mercs 2. The package is a solid 1.5 GB, and you can get it from here, here, here or wherever else you (and your connection) feel confortable with.

"The Mercenaries 2: World in Flames free PC demo lets players have a playable sneak preview of the final product.

Players can play an objective from one of the missions, and while they are limited to a relatively small section of the world, there's enough there for players to get a feel for the sandbox nature of the game.

Additionally, we give players a customized load out of awesome vehicles and airstrikes, so that players can get a taste of the toys and destruction that combine to make Mercenaries 2 the premier explosive action game of the summer!"

Despite having gone gold earlier this month and receiving what looked like a final release date for October 3, X³: Terran Conflict isn't quite ready to be put to the test by its hardcore fans, after all. But don't worry, it won't be much longer. According to a recent update posted by German developer Egosoft, they had to push back the game's release to October 10, "due to unforeseen delays in the production process".

Aside from fixing whatever is wrong with it, the devs are also promising to "sweeten the waiting time" with more screenshots, videos and blog entries. And speaking of videos, we seem to have missed a few of them during our extended summer break. Well, no matter, here they are now.