With Gears of War 2 just around the corner, a lot of excitement is brewing in the minds and thumbs of Xbox 360 owners. This latest developer diary is going to get the hype meters to hit the red . This video reminds us what all the fuss is about by showing little snippets of some of the new maps and multiplayer modes. After we had the chance to give Gears of Wars multiplayer a good go at rAge it became awfully clear that Gears of War 2 is going to blow our minds and keep us playing and playing until our poor little Xbox 360's disappear into a cloud of smoke or red rings. With so many people still playing the original Gears of War a whole 2 years after it's release then all the new modes and maps are sure to keep us all busy for a very, very long time to come. In the wonderful words of Marcus Phoenix: "Bring It!"

Microsoft has announced that since it cut the price of the Xbox 360, worldwide sales have shot through the roof. In America sales have doubled, over in Europe sales have increased by 62% and in Japan sales have skyrocketed 500%… Obviously the release of all those JRPG’s in Japan also made a difference but either way sales are up and …

EndWar has promised to change the way that we play real-time strategy (RTS) games on console and was built from the ground up to work on our little controllers with the aid of voice commands as opposed to the classic setup of a mouse and keyboard. While the Command & Conquer controls were pretty decent on console, it still didn't have me completely sold on the idea of an RTS console game. As I was not too clued in on EndWar's features (except knowing it had voice commands), I asked him to demo the game for me and show me what's what.... Romain (Who sounds an awful lot like Borat) starts explaining how the entire game can be controlled with the use of only the right trigger (to activate voice commands) and your headset. Lo and behold he starts issuing orders into the headset like "Unit 1, move to Alpha" and "Unit 2, attack hostile 2" and you know what, they all went off and did their thing.... For one, I do not trust voice recognition or commands, I have always thought that they were nifty but never really accurate or useful.... What happened next (and due to the fact that I spoke slowly) is that a menu popped up showing that I had selected Unit 1 and then rolled out into a secondary panel of options.... Within only a few minutes I was calling in units, attacking the bad people and grouping squads together and by that time, I was talking at the same pace as I would in normal conversation, if not faster.... A great decision in the games development is that your camera is attached to your units, so you can only see what your units see by calling their name and saying "camera" to move to their view. Your camera is fairly low in the battlefield, which means that you rely heavily on your squads to recon areas before you move in, adding a wonderful element of strategy into the games dynamics.... We are talking Ghost Recon, Rainbox Six and Splinter Cell units, and if that's not cool then I don't know what is.... Your chosen faction will duke it out with the others for they day, with the end result of the day showing who won what and where. A campaign may take up to three weeks to complete and once World War III is over, it all kicks off from the beginning again.... I left the interview convinced that EndWar is definitely one to look out for, especially if you are into RTS games. If you aren't an RTS fan, do yourself a favour and check it our anyway, the accessibility of the voice commands may just change your mind.

Halo 3: Recon ‘Debut’ trailer HD Remember all the chaos caused over the fact that the trailer Bungie released for the Halo 3 expansion pack – Recon, really didn’t show much? Well now we have a proper trailer, the first half (and change) of the video is what we’ve seen in the past, with a city being bombarded, pods falling …

That’s right, Namco Bandai announced last night at TGS that Tekken 6 would be making it’s way to the Xbox 360 as well, Infact Microsoft announced it first at their press conference which sent alot of fanboys into a whining frenzy before Namco Bandai quelled their fears later by announcing the game would still come to PS3 aswell. Last Updated: …

I just happened to be one of those lucky journalists and I have come back with exclusive inside information, hands-on impressions with both the single and multiplayer as well as an in-depth look at a map-editor that is going to change the way that things are done in these parts.... Here is a table of contents: Far Cry 2 - What can we expect - page 1 Interview with Far Cry 2 developers - page 2 Single Player Hands-on Preview - page 3 Multiplayer Hands-on Preview - page 3 Map Editor Impressions - page 4 Far Cry 2 - What can we expect Throughout the presentations and interviews, we were able to get a lot of dirt on the developers thoughts behind Far Cry 2 as well as the reasons behind many of their decisions.... This quickly made them realise that the focus for Far Cry 2 would be on humans and that there was no need to continue with the story of the first game but instead focus on the core gameplay elements that fans enjoyed so much.... While the original Far Cry was almost a take on "The Island of Dr. Moreau" and Crysis took a look at the ideas behind "The War of the Worlds", Far Cry 2 looks has taken it's influences from stories that have more of a personal effect on the characters rather than an external source.... LP Pharand and Clint Hocking talk to Lazygamer.co.za When I heard that I had some time with the developers, I instantly realised that I wanted to ask them a few questions about their decision with selecting Africa as their setting.... The developers have done all that they can to keep the players immersed in the game by introducing concepts such as little to no hud as well as always keeping the player in the eyes of his character and never pulling it out for cutscenes or animations.... A: Far Cry 2's map editor only uses elements already in the game and most of the creations are created procedurally, meaning that gamers will only be downloading the settings onto their systems and nothing external so there are absolutely no issues whatsoever.... LP also added that with so many ideas being put in the game they were given more time to realise what worked and what didn't, saying that they had to stop being stubborn and just realise that some elements weren't working and had to change or be removed. The in-game map was an idea brought in later on that incurred a lot of expenses but Clint pushed hard for it and in the end Ubisoft allowed it and it seems to make all the difference in the end so the end product is now much more of a game than it would have been had it been released earlier in the year. Hands-on with Far Cry 2's Single Player Campaign I was given the opportunity to spend an hour in Far Cry 2's campaign mode all by myself as well as have a walkthrough of the game with Clint Hocking and LP Pharand at rAge.... Besides the Maleria you will be put through quite a lot of hell as the healing system in the game shows off some very disturbing first person animations that will have you relocating joints, pulling bullets out of your legs with a pair of pliers and removing pieces of shrapnel from various areas of your body, with the total number of different animations coming to a massive forty nine.... This being a game with over 80 hours of gameplay, it will have to keep us wondering whether it will keep it's flair to the end or just become repetitive and annoying once the technical wonders lose their novelty so keep an eye out for our final review.... 6 Xbox 360 consoles were hooked up and ready to go so that we could all have a good go at destroying each other with as many weapons as possible, add to that the fact that the developers joined us and it was something that was not to be missed. We happily played away for most of the day on Saturday and late into the night and I am proud to report that of the 3 games that I joined in that had the developers playing, I came out on top in two of them and lost the third by only one point to Clint Hocking.... Through the use of the map editor, gamers can look forward to an unlimited amount of user created maps to play and the developers themselves have already said that they can see that gamers are going to be doing crazy things with the tools like recreating their favorite maps from other games.

  Resident Evil 5 ‘TGS 2008 Play God’ trailer A mysterious figure emerges. Jill Valentine shows up in a surprising twist. The executioner looks awesome. Is that Wesker? Just watch the video. [Ed: Yes SIR] Last Updated: October 9, 2008

  Joystiq have managed to grab a good 30 minutes on hand with the new Price of Persia, I didn’t get a good chance to have a go at rAge but I can tell you, from what I saw that graphically, it was looking awesome. There’s a summary and another video after the jump. Last Updated: October 9, 2008