The pirate-themed, real-time strategy/board game from Certain Affinity and Capcom Age of Booty is heading to iOS and Android devices soon.

The company announced that an “all-new version” of the game is in the works, being developed with Chaotic Moon.

Announced for the new Age of Booty will be a single-player campaign, along with real-time multiplayer and cross-platform support. Currently, there’s no announced release date for it.

Steam is having a power sale this weekend for EA’s Dead Space series with both games selling for $5 each.

If there was ever a good time for you to try out one of the scariest new franchises this side of Resident Evil, now is the perfect time. Don’t forget: play in the dark, sound turned all the way up. And have an extra pair of underwear on standby.

A new fan-film throwing tribute to Turtle Rock Studios’ Left 4 Dead franchise gives tribute (and then some) to one of this generation’s highly praised first-person shooters.

We can thank AIRSOFTGIdotcom and producers Northern Five Entertainment for this great video that features L4D characters Zoey, Louis and Francis as they make their way to the boathouse outside of Riverside to board the Slater’s fishing vessel. The short-film goes swimmingly good at the start but expect to be completely thrown when the zombie-fest gets grittier (we won’t spoil it for you — just watch).

For more from AIRSOFTGIdotcom, subscribe to their YouTube page.

Marvel Universe Online is dead. At least… The name is dead. Start calling the upcoming MMORPG from Gazillion Entertainment Marvel Heroes.

Before the name change took place, Gazillion had hinted that it had an unusual solution to the problem of the relationship between player-created characters and established heroes. According to Shack News, Gazillion commented that the new title better reflects the “pivotal” role of the iconic Marvel characters in the game’s universe.

Having taken to Twitter, Schofield attempted to rally Call of Duty fans in support of the highly anticipated shooter. After originally making headlines over at IGN this morning, the above tweet has been deleted but you can still see the aftershocks of the original request as the day went on.

Modern Warfare 3 has attracted a lot of (mainly good) buzz since its release but recently user scores from Metacritic has put the game in a very awkward spotlight. A high amount of user scores rating zero across all three platforms has damaged the game’s overall user score, leaving some very low averages for the hottest selling title this season. Out of a possible 10, as of this writing, the current user score is 3.1 for 360, 2.3 for PS3 and 1.6 for PC.

Does Modern Warfare 3 deserve the rash of negative scores it’s getting on Metacritic? Leave your responses in the comments and let us know what you think.

All the back and forth banter and bullshit aside, the best thing for the consumer is competition. It’s fairly obvious to most that there’s a grudge match, or rivalry that’s come of age between EA’s Battlefield franchise and Activision’s Call of Duty. Both games are shooters, both games are multiplayer powerhouses, and both display the upper echelon of polish and commitment. But, to make an analogy here, both series are as different from each other as a Lamborghini is from a Ferrari. And, with this new installment — Battlefield 3, I think EA will further separate itself from CoD as a unique and rewarding experience unto itself.

To some it may seem a bit odd that I speak about how unique and different BF3 is from any CoD game when one of BF3‘s selling boasts was it’s new, more theatrical like Campaign Mode. Without beating around the bush, I’ll say right off the bat, DICE tried admirably but fell a bar short on that one. The campaign is good, but a bit far-fetched and intangible at times. That’s possibly the ambition from obviously striving for that Clancy-like notion with the storyline — that what you are seeing is possible. The first 10 minutes will convey this easy enough. As best put by a fellow PCS writer, “they on some Jack Bauer shit right now.” But despite this, it’d be ludicrous to say the campaign was at all unsatisfying. You step into many roles, which I won’t spoil here, being so much more than just a foot soldier and leaving players waiting to see what’s next. The only thing that drove me crazy is the difficulty when set on hard. I swear every enemy on the map will use his jedi forces powers to instantly sense when your cross-hairs are present on them and return expert marksman fire! Just once I wanted to pop my head up when friendlies had an enemy distracted and not have him turn right towards me. Normal difficulty doesn’t have this problem so to speak. Story aside, the real reason BF3 sucks you in so hard is the visuals and the sound.

Skull crushing sound effects are nothing new from DICE. Battlefield: Bad Company was truly impressive as hell, but BF3 ups the ante. Nothing, I mean nothing, has assaulted my ear drums outside of a movie theater like this game has. Bullets snap, crackle, and pop appropriately. Sniper rounds produce the most insidious and alarming hiss. Tank cannons literally shake you up, providing a rumble followed by an appropriate moment of temporary deafness. Honestly, anyone with a decent home theater with surround will instantly realize DICE sound engineers have few, if any, equals. Having never been in a war zone I imagine this has to be as close to real deal as your gonna come in a living room. All that and some visuals that may underwhelm at first but will grow on you as you watch them in motion.

The draw distance is impressive and when you jump into a jet or chopper and actually see the entirety of the maps things wow you even more. But what really shines with BF3 is the lighting effects. This is the first game I ever experienced where light is a weapon. It’s not the same old laying in a dark corner or the old flashbang effect but light being used naturally as an advantage… Flashlights will blind momentarily and laser sights will dazzle opponents. My new favorite BF3 moment has to be standing at the top of a hill with the sun above you using it to obscure the enemy at the bottom whose sighted you in multiplayer. Where CoD seems to reward the skilled and responsive, BF3 rewards ingenuity and creativity.

A side note about the graphics…

Like Rage, there is an option to download the disks to your hard drive and let the 360 stream textures for the best visual experience. I highly recommend this option.

The joy of playing against other humans truly shines in BF3. Battlefield 3 showcases true head-to-head action in multiplayer with many sorties resulting in multiple individuals trying to outmaneuver or outthink each other. BF3 maps offer so much ground to cover that approaching objectives from straight on is almost never required and seldom encouraged. This dynamic leads to the aforementioned outmaneuvering — something few other shooters ever really reward as much. Vehicles are vulnerable and attention grabbing but also rapid moving and destructive. Sometimes speed is a must and other times sheer firepower is the drug of choice. Battlefield’s textbook building demolition comes into play to turn the tides of a firefight. Explosives can demolish buildings that enemies entrench themselves in and serve to dynamically change the battlefield. You can find the very area you’re standing in quickly losing more and more cover as the battle ensues. Factor in the changing objectives in a rush match and you get an idea of the pace that BF3 can have. Multiplayer sees Rush, Conquest and Death Match modes returning, allowing squad-based options as well. The only thing I have to negatively say is that it can take several minutes at times to find a match or open server even when using quick match but once you’re in, it is worth the wait. In-between games you’ll be given a comprehensive report of your previous performance and progress towards new unlocks.

Balancing in BF3 does a good job and keeps things from feeling overpowered and unfair as players progress in ranks. Let me be the first to say how annoying it can be when people spend all their time playing a game and sharpening their skills are rewarded with even more overpowered weaponry. It’s always nice when you can play a game like a normal person who has a life and still be competitive when you do. The checks and balances system in this game actually works and allows players to react to the various situations around them for success instead of learning the best exploit to triumph.

Battlefield 3 has grabbed my attention like few shooters have in the last few years. In your hands it feels like the realization of Bad Company 2‘s promise in almost every way. Modern Warfare 3 hasn’t been released yet, so comparisons are unfair at this point, but I honestly think that a comparison is futile anyway. As I said before, you’d be comparing apples to pears — at least as far a multiplayer is concerned. They’re both fruit, but some simply prefer one to the other. DICE grabs you by the balls with this one and doesn’t let go!

All week, THQ games are on sale upwards of 75% with a giant mega pack containing 15 titles (including Darksiders, Red Faction, Metro 2033, etc.) at half-off for $49.99. With a new special every day, check out the THQWeek2011 page at Steam.

The first thing that stands out in RAGE are the beautiful graphics in the post-apocalyptic backdrop of the game.  Id Tech 5 easily proves itself to be one of the most powerful game engines on the market.  RAGE has an incredible draw distance and as a result there is practically no fog when looking far, far away into the environment.  Dust blows by, water ripples, ambient lights flicker, and fires have the heat waves surrounding them.  Character designs are full of post-apocalyptic personality.  NPCs and enemies have varied and interesting designs about them.  But most noticeable are that no outside environments look the same, not even the rocks seem duplicated to create the seemingly vast desert in RAGE.  Animations are easily the best of any game on the market because they are so smooth and varied, plus everything runs at 60 frames per second.  Enemies will roll, flip, jump, crawl, and most importantly react to every shot that hits them.  Shoot an enemy in the leg and they will limp.  Shoot them in the arm and they will hold it in pain.  There’s even some cool death animations for the various weapons used in-game.  Some of the other reactionary animations are also great and have a lot of do with complimenting the game’s super cool A.I.  More of on that great A.I. later though.

RAGE’s storyline might be the weakest point of the whole game.  The story of RAGE opens to a post-nuclear future where a destructive asteroid is headed towards Earth.  The nameless player character is one of a selected few humans chosen to be placed in life-support in a subterranean pod called an Ark.  Apparently the Ark inhabitants have been given nanotech implants as well.  A disturbance causes the Ark to awaken the game’s main character to a world truly gone mad.  Upon existing the Ark, being attacked, and rescued by a local outpost leader the game introduces players into a serious of quests to familiarize one with the world.  As the player talks to NPCs, picks up fetch quests, and meets new personalities throughout the game the storyline opens up slowly at first and then later moves a lot faster.  A few too many locales are returned to a bit too often though and the narrative is lacking.

RAGE’s gameplay has what many single player FPS are missing today.  Superb A.I.!  From the very first enemy encounter to the last, RAGE’s A.I. will keep even the hardest of veteran FPS players on their toes.  Most enemies in RAGE are always moving which makes them very hard to hit.  Add to that enemies who dodge, duck, climb, and jump around the environment just to make sure the player dies a quick and painful death.  Some enemies will hide behind cover and take shots, but will alway reposition themselves once they’ve been shot or shoot at by the player.  It’s almost stand seeing the A.I. in a game pulling off S.W.A.T. turns to get better position on the player.  Even enemies who have been injured will limp, slide, or crawl away to cover while taking potshots at the player.  Some will even attempt to retreat and regroup once most of their comrades have been killed.  This is the way A.I. should be in most games!  Not the usual treatment of the enemies being more accurate and doing more damage just because the difficulty setting is higher.  Gamers deserve their single player games to be challenging outside of multiplayer.  Id Software has answered that call with RAGE.

RAGE’s A.I. is complimented by some truly great FPS and combat racing action.  Expecting less than a stellar FPS gameplay experience from an Id Software game is foolish.  RAGE continues Id’s tradition of bloody, violent FPS action with an arsenal of killing weapons.  Id created the concept of  ”gibs” in games afterall.  Shotguns will blow heads off, grenades turn enemies to tomato paste, wingsticks (a smartblade ripped straight from the 80′s film Krull) will decapitate any enemy in its path with a chance of returning to sender, and a number of other exotic death animations abound with other weapons.  Add to that the fact that weapons have up to four different ammo types with varying effects and there’s plenty of devilish fun to be had with the enemies.  While there are the expected shotguns, assault rifles, pistols, and other firearms, RAGE also sports a number of other death-dealing weapons and ammo types that can be found or crafted with schematics and items found in the environments.  One, in particular, creates a spider-like sentry drone with a mounted machine gun on its top that will hunt down nearby enemies.  There are many other ways to give the game’s enemies pure Hell though and trust that they will still not be easy to take on later in the game.

RAGE also has a built-in racing combat portion that is fairly seamless.  Driving outside of towns will frequently result in vehicle battles with bandits in the desert.  Vehicles are earned during races and can be upgraded with tires, weapons, nitro, suspension and other parts.  There’s also many race tracks and arenas to participate in.  The driving parts of RAGE bear a slight resemblance to Motorstorm at a glance.  This is simply no tacked on feature as the racing is just as fun as the rest of the game.  In fact, Id was so confident about their racing component that the games versus multiplayer mode is vehicular combat, NOT FPS player vs player.  To some that may be a sin coming from Id Software, but it really is fun and worth playing.  And there is a co-op online FPS mode that plays out like a horde gametype.  Maybe Id will consider a DLC for FPS deathmatch later on to meet fan demands.

Even with a few minor setbacks in its formula RAGE still reeks of a high quality game.  Sporting a beautifully powerful new game engine, some of the best FPS A.I. seen in years, a fun combat racing portion, a plethora of mini-games, and a long list of quests to complete, RAGE is something truly special for FPS lovers.  Id Software seated this game deeply in traditional old school FPS style fun and added just enough modern features, gameplay diversions and customization to make it flesh out into a great experience all-around.  An incredibly polished game that runs smooth at all times (provided the HDD install was done) with barely even a glitch or bug to be seen.  With all of the other highly anticipated games releasing this Fall, RAGE may fly directly under the radar of most gamers, but without a doubt it’s a game well worth adding to the must-buy list.

For the first time in 10 years a game worthy of being called better than Diablo 2 may have finally emerged. Guess it shouldn’t be surprising that it’s actually Diablo 3 but the wait was at least worth it. After spending months looking at concept art and gameplay videos Blizzard has a lot to live up to. From just the brief taste Blizzard’s beta brings us, I can say the hype is well deserved.

Spanning only a few hours of campaign gameplay, the beta starts off allowing the creation of all five character types, which essentially multiplies that by a number of five. As always, each character feels unique and powerful. The depth of each character immediately becomes clear once you get it all rolling. You start the game with the ability to equip just one skill. Although you have many more you can equip, it isn’t until higher levels that you can assign more than one. Runestones are also available which you can attach to your skills and imbue them with new even more beneficial powers.

Wherein previous Diablo games where your equipment defined your character, in Diablo 3 the greater emphasis is on the skills you equip. This allows you to switch your style on the fly — something co-op mode benefits from immensely. Theses small changes retain the feel of the previous games but add something new and fresh to the experience. A familiar face will pop up during gameplay adding to the series’ nostalgia many will defintiely feel.

Another familiar feature to Diablo 3 is the top notch art direction that the series (along with pretty much every Blizzard title) has come to be known for. Though the environments in the beta are dark and dreary, Diablo 3 still looks colorful and vibrant. You can tell by the overall depth and detail put in from Blizzard that the game has been designed to run on virtually any system. With the visuals cranked all the way up on my Nvidia 555m equipped laptop the game came out running smoothly.

Going along with the storyline for Diablo, the game takes place in Sanctuary, the dark fantasy world of the series. Saved twenty years prior by a handful of unnamed heroes after the events from Diablo 2, you’ll immediately feel the familiarity of the iconic PC series as you start out. Sound effects will instantly remind those who have spent countless hours farming Diablo for loot and XP that countless hours of your existence will soon be lost to Blizzard once more.

Currently, Diablo 3 is slated for a 2nd quarter release in 2012. I’ll update if/when things are changed or added to the beta.

“Shank 2 isn’t just a reboot of Shank,” Andy Katkin of EA wrote on the EA liveblog, “it’s an entirely new game.”

“What we did was rip the game apart and reconstruct it to allow us to have more responsive controls and better graphics,” Klei Entertainment’s Jamie Cheng said. ”We tore our combat system apart … and created new controls to be able to use the enemies’ weapons against themselves.”

A co-op mode has also been announced for the new game (a lot of you wanted that from the original game) by way of a multiplayer co-op survival mode. ”Instead of just giving another co-op campaign that you play once and never play again,” Cheng explained, “we took the mechanics and created a new way of playing.”

Shank 2 is tentatively announced as a 2012 title and will be available on PS3, 360 and PC via digital distribution.

Christopher Plummer, a two-time Emmy Award winner, two-time Tony Award winner and Academy Award nominee, takes on the role of Arngeir, a powerful Greybeard elder. An order of philosopher monks who are masters of the Way of the Voice, the Greybeards live in silent isolation atop Skyrim’s largest mountain.

· Diane Louise Salinger (“Carnivale”), Renee Victor (“Weeds”), and Saturday Night Live-alum George Coe (“Transformers: Dark of the Moon”) round out the star-studded cast of more than 70 different voice actors delivering over 60,000 lines of dialogue.

Electronic Arts, BioWare and LucasArts gives the gaming community the biggest of teases on Star Wars: The Old Republic to date: An actual release date! The MMO that almost everyone wants to play is set for release December 20 for North America and December 22 for Europe. Accompanying the date for TOR, the game’s pricing structure has also been revealed.

With the purchase of Star Wars: The Old Republic, gamers will receive a free month of online play that comes with the game. Once over, gamers can elect for payment plans which start at $15 for a single month, $42 for three months or $78 for six months. If you’re thinking this all sounds similar to the structuring of World of Warcraft, who can blame you? WoW is practically the direct competition for TOR.

For those of you out there who get down with pre-orders, early access for Star Wars: The Old Republic has been promised. May the force be with you — especially since a lot of you will most likely be ditching holiday family plans to get your Jedi (or Sith) on…

A June 21, 2011 US release date was announced for the Roman mythology based MMO. GODS & HEROES: Rome Rising will offer a one week head-start as well as bonus unlocks in game for those who pre-order. Gamers that preorder the game at retail or online will unlock the Tunic of the Gods bonus power early and receive an exclusive marble statue to decorate their in-game estate.

In Gods & Heroes: Rome Rising, gamers take on the role of a Demigod and celebrated hero of the Roman army. These brave warriors set out on a quest for vengeance against an ancient enemy, the Telchine gods, who have returned to topple the empire and avenge their defeat at the hands of the Olympian gods. While battling in the midst of Roman landmarks and legendary scenery, players will also experience:

Intense Combat Action – Expect intense combat where heroes will wield an arsenal of weapons and the powers of the gods themselves to perform combat moves which can be linked together, including dramatic finishing moves for intense battle sequences

In Hunted, Lawless voices the character of Seraphine, an adventurer-turned-temptress. Under the influence of the Demon Forge’s ancient and powerful evil, she appears as a spirit guide that lures Caddoc and E’lara, the game’s protagonists, into a dark and twisted adventure with promises of great wealth and power.

“Hunted is an incredibly dark, intense game and I’m delighted to have the opportunity to work on such a thrilling project,” said Lucy Lawless. “After playing the heroine for so long it’s refreshing to portray such a villainous, seductive temptress!”

Lawless, who rose to fame through her groundbreaking performance as “Xena: Warrior Princess”, currently stars in the television series, “Spartacus: Gods of the Arena” and recurs on the ABC series “No Ordinary Family”. In addition to these two high-profile roles, she also starred as D’Anna/Number Three in the critically-acclaimed Syfy Channel series “Battlestar Galactica.”

Destiny of Velious™ follows the events of EQII Sentinel’s Fate™. The prophecy known as “Age’s End” has begun to unfold in the legendary continent of Velious where the war for Norrath has been foretold. The prophecy begins to unravel as the stage is set for the destruction of the entire EverQuest II universe when the twin Swords of Destiny, Soulfire, and the Qeynos Claymore have all been drained of their powers. Norrath’s guardians must fight to restore the Swords of Destiny if there is going to be any hope of saving Norrath from its fate. To succeed and achieve ultimate glory, the guardians must overcome labyrinthine dungeons, the harsh Velious tundra, and powerful creatures. If they fail, all will fall to ruin.

EverQuest II Destiny of Velious is now available worldwide on PC at the suggested retail price of $39.99 USD for an all-in-one package, including three adventure packs and seven expansion packs. The Collector’s Edition, which includes several in-game bonus items, is available for $89.99 USD.

The first game update for DCUO includes:

Bane Duo: Two-player battle against the villain
Open World PvP: New Gotham PvP zone
Batcave 2 Raid: New 8-player raid zone added to Batcave, where players will fight alongside Batman against Brainiac and Brother Eye
Broker: Players can visit the auction houses in the Watchtower or the Hall of Doom to swap gear with each other to get their hero or villain completely tricked out
New collections, races and investigations