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The Game Boy: Linear Games Aren’t Bad – They’re Just Misunderstood

Certain sects of the gaming populace would have you believe that linearity – be it in story or gameplay – is a dinosaur, on a fated collision course with the meteor that is freeform game design. After all, who wants to be funneled down the same glorified corridor every time they play through a game – having the same conversations with the same characters – when they could be forging new paths and crafting their own unique stories as they go along? Sure, Half-Life 2 was great, but we’re in the a...

Maingear’s eX-L 18 Laptop Packs Two GTX 280M GPUs in SLI

Maingear claims its new eX-L18 laptop is the "World's Most Power Gaming Notebook," and while we've seem some desktop replacements built around the Core i7 platform that might dispute that title, the eX-L18 is at least one of the fastest spec'd Core 2 notebooks on the block. Sporting a generous 18.4-inch LCD, Maingear's latest lappy comes configurable with up to an Intel Core 2 Extreme X9300 processor (2.53GHz), 4GB or 8GB of DDR3-1333 memory, up to three 2.5-inch SATA or SSD drives wit...

MySpace Looks to Videogames to Take on Facebook

As more users flock to Facebook, MySpace owner News Corp sees a need to shake its social networking site up, and it plans to do that by transforming the social playground into a bigger online gaming platform. Johathan Miller, News Corp's head honcho, hopes the move will inspire videogame suppliers to use MySpace's data to develop better games and then launch those apps on the site. "MySpace is and will be more in the future a gaming platform, a space for people to meet and play games,"...

Epic: Unreal Tournament On-Hold for “Several Years”

For Unreal Tournament, the third time wasn’t quite a charm. So after the less-than-amazing Unreal Tournament 3, Epic has decided to give its old dog a break, instead hoping to teach some new tricks to its more youthful franchises. So said Epic Games co-founder Tim Sweeney, speaking with G4. “Unreal Tournament is certainly a major long-term priority but we’re planning not to release a major retail game in the series for several years.  So we have that effort somewhat on hold while we work on a...

Shock and Awe: The Sims 3 Outsold All Other Games in June

We don’t just mean PC games, either. Even console games couldn’t stand against the shockingly legal substance that is The Sims 3. And we’re talking retail sales here, too. That’s console turf! Guys in the audience, we’re sure you once told your younger sisters that playing with fake guns was way cooler than fiddling around with dolls. Well, based on the way The Sims 3 (820,000 copies sold) trounced console best-seller Prototype (419,000 copies sold), we’d say you were dead wrong. The full PC ...

SteelSeries Announces New Xai Laser Mouse

Late last week SteelSeries unveiled three new products: the SteelSeries Kinzu Optical Mouse, the SteelSeries 9HD mouse pad, and their latest flagship product, the SteelSeries Xai Laser Mouse. The Xai will feature a 10.8 megapixel per second sensor, which is capable of processing 12,000 frames per second at 5,001 CPI at a movement speed of 150 inches per second. And, for further personalization, it’ll come with SteelSeries ExactAim, SteelSeries ExactRate, SteelSeries ExactSens, SteelSeries Free...

Champions Online Open Beta Emerges from Phone Booth on August 17

How would you like a chance to suit up and stamp out some crime before everyone with a decent rig and an eye for spandex starts doing it? If so, circle August 17 on your calendar, because that’s when Champions Online begins its open beta. In addition, if you preorder the game from any number of outlets, you gain "guaranteed access" to the beta (we thought “guaranteed access” was implied in the term “open beta”), along with some other super-powered goodies that vary from store-to-stor...

Splinter Cell: Conviction Delayed… Again

Rise and shine, Mr. Fisher… Oops, wrong game, but you can forgive us for making the mistake. After all, Splinter Cell: Conviction’s delay-borne trail of broken hearts and crushed dreams is nearly as long as the one produced by Half-Life 2 – especially now that the game’s been delayed again.   Originally Re-scheduled to launch this fall, Conviction’s now looking at an “early 2010” release date. The game’s been delayed four times, and was first set to launch in Q4 2007. Ubisoft’s saying it’ll be...

MechWarrior Re-Launch Confirmed — First Details!

The universe is a just place. MechWarrior is real. There will now be a short intermission in this news article, during which you are free to jump up and down, kiss random passersby, or thank/make a blood sacrifice to your deity of choice. Done? Cool. So, as basically confirmed earlier, the game’s being developed by Piranha Games and former FASA boss Jordan Weisman’s new company, Smith and Tinker. Instead of joining the ranks of series like Final Fantasy, Call of Duty, and Mega Man with a five-...

The Game Boy: Single-Player and Multiplayer — Two Tastes That Go Great Together?

Every gamer has a story. A story assembled from countless in-game experiences, a collage of victory, defeat, heroics, and villainy. There is, however, a schism in the way these stories play out. Ask someone who’s lived out their gaming days in solitude and they’ll tell you of superhuman feats, epic dramas, and non-player characters who may not have been real boys, but were certainly close enough that Geppetto would’ve been hard-pressed to tell the difference. Pose the same question to multiplaye...