Earlier this week we reported that the MMO company Multiverse had announced plans to develop a game based on the Buffy The Vampire Slayer TV series. They also revealed that a previously announced MMO based on another Joss Whedon created TV series, Firefly, has been put on the back burner. We wondered at the time about Multiverse's motives since they announced the Firefly MMO nearly two years ago and had revealed nothing since.

Well our sister site Massively managed to chat with Multiverse's marketing director Corey Bridges and while he dodged a lot of their questions he did say that development of the Buffy MMO was indeed underway with a 2D Flash client planned for release around the end of the year (he declined to give any gameplay details). He also said that there had been some actual development work done on the Firefly MMO but declined to say what happened with that game, saying only, "There are just some issues that need to be worked through. Hopefully things will get back on track before too long." We still will believe it when we see it.

Eidos is famous for hiring sexy English models to portray Lara Croft and then send them over to various game conventions and promotional events.They have been doing this for over 10 years now and have just hired their newest model, 23 year old Alison Carroll. However these models are strictly for eye candy; they have never actually participated in any of the Tomb Raider game development. They have never been the voice of Lara Croft nor handled any of the motion capture for the character.

That is not the case for actress-model Melinda Cohen, who showed up at Penny Arcade Expo last weekend to promote the upcoming Replay Studios-Gamecock stealth action game Velvet Assassin. Cohen was there as a booth model but she is also handling the voice for the character of Violet Summer (in both English and German versions) in the game itself. She's also doing motion capture work for the character in the game. all of which puts her several steps ahead of any Lara Croft model. Velvet Assassin is currently scheduled for release late in 2008.

[Via Destructoid]

There's a lot of third party middleware game engines out on the market: Epic Games has the Unreal Engine, Valve has the Source engine, Crytek has the Cryengine, Emergent has Gamebyro, id has the upcoming id Tech 5 and so on. But Electronic Arts is looking into the posiblity of doing the same thing with the engine that's the basis for their alien evolution sim game Spore.

In an article at the Rocky Mountain News, EA Games president Frank Gibeau states that the Spore engine is "extremely malleable. You could add RPG or action, you could take it to different platforms, like (Web-page) flash games, the PlayStation 3, the Xbox 360, Nintendo's Wii." He even stated that they are looking into licensing the Spore technology to third party game developers. One big problem with this is that third party developers might not want to use technology that's owned by one of the world's largest publishers. A few years ago, EA bought Criterion Software who created the Renderware engine that was used before EA's purchase in tons of games (including the GTA III series). However, licensing of Renderware dissapeared overnight after the EA/Criterion acquisition.

[Via Kotaku]

In the past few months, we have heard from Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli rant a number of times against piracy of PC games, specifically for his 2007 shooter Crysis. He has even claimed that just one legitimate copy of the game has been sold compared to 20 pirates copies of the game. But are such numbers misleading? Edge Online has an opinion that says, "Yes",

That opinion comes from Tom Jubert, an editor for the UK based Gameshadow which supplies automatic downloads of PC games. Jubert does state, "There's no doubt that PC gaming suffers due to piracy - and to a considerably greater extent than console titles." However, he believes that Yerli's claims of the amount of piracy is overblown. Jubert uses data from their own Gameshadow program to prove his point, saying, "What that means is I can tell you the ratio of legal vs illegal Crysis installs in GameShadow's UK customer base is more like 7:3, while in the US it's closer to 5:1 - a far less bleak scenario."

And while Yerli's ratio claims may in fact be true in a worldwide sense, Jubert adds, "they are not representative of the true impact of piracy on the PC games industry." He states most pirated copies are going to territories where there's not a large PC gaming market anyway. Also he feels not everyone who pirated a copy of the game would haved purchased it anyway if they couldn't get a free copy anyway. Jubert's conclusion? "In short, rampant piracy is no longer the catch-all excuse it's often employed as."

You may have noticed that the trailers for the upcoming movie version of Remedy's Max Payne game series don't have a rating yet, even though the movie is a little more than a month away from release. That's because the Twentieth Century Fox production is trying to get a PG-13 rating for the ultra-violent film. However the MPAA ratings board has slapped an early cut of the film with an R rating which will almost certainly lower its potential take at the box office.

Das Gamer has a chat with the film's director John Moore who expressed frustration over the ratings fight with the MPAA with Max Payne. Moore states, "They said to me, the movie feels R. And I said, "What the f*** is that, a group therapy session?" You can't do that. They're meant to judge content, not intent. They said the movie felt dark." Max Payne is due in theaters on Oct 17.

Electronic Arts' long awaited alien evolution sim game Spore is already shipped for folks in Europe (the US release is due on Sunday) but it appears that the folks across the water have had some issues signing onto the game's online servers.

While Spore is technically a single player game EA has set up its DRM that makes people register their copy on the Internet before they can begin playing. A post on EA's UK message board states, "We are aware that many of you are having login problems with Spore. This is being investigated so please bear with us." While another message from the same message board moderator seemed to indicate things are improving, several other posters are still stating they cannot log in and register their copy of the game. Just for the record we downloaded and registered our review copy of the game without any issues so it's possible that the US release will not have as many problems.

You may remember that a week ago Electronic Arts took over a gas station in Los Angeles to give out free gas to anyone that showed up. It was a neat little promotion for their now released open world action game Mercenaries 2. Well, EA tried to do the same promo stunt in a UK suburb of London but had their efforts shut down by local officials.

According to the UK based Telegraph web site, the promotion caused a massive traffic jam as hundreds of cars got in line to get the free petrol. Local politican Lynne Featherstone stated, "Whilst a lucky few might have got some free petrol, hundreds of local residents have faced misery on their daily journeys this morning. They deserve an apology for being the victims of such an ill-thought out media stunt." Not everyone feels this way. Local resident Donna Lashley waited 40 minutes to get her car fueled for free and stated, "I think it's a brilliant promotion. I don't see it becoming a full-time thing, but I think it's a great idea - I'll be telling my sons about the game."

[Via GamePolitics]

THQ has had the Warhammer 40,000 PC/Video game license from Games Workshop for several years now. They company has released a poorly received first person shooter (Fire Warrior)and a highly regarded RTS game series, (Dawn of War) based on the Warhammer 40K property with Dawn of War II and an upcoming MMO already announced.

However it looks like the publisher is planning to bring the franchise into yet another genre; the third person action shooter game. Leaked footage found its way to YouTube which displays about nine minutes of footage (taken from an Xbox 360 version) from what is titled Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine. The footage show some early but what looks like highly playable scenes from the game as the Space Marine of the title deals a lot of damage to its foes with some impressive looking graphics. No developer was revealed for the game and there's no indication when it might be released.

[Via Shacknews]

Ubisoft's revamp of their Far Cry shooter franchise finally has a firm release date here in the US. According to GameSpot the publisher has confirmed that October 21 is when Far Cry 2 is due to ship to stores which is what other online retailers have shown for some time now. Europeans have to wait a few days for their copies; Far Cry 2 ships over the pond on October 24.

The open world shooter set in Africa will also get a special limited Collector's Edition. You can see the contents in the picture above. It will contain a behind-the-scenes DVD, an art book, a t-shirt and a map-poster of the game's 50 kilometer setting. There's no word yet on the pricing for the Collector's Edition for the US market.

Valve's weekend sales on Steam are usually just one or two titles but this weekend its a boatload of games that are now just 50 percent off for this weekend only. All of them are part of the id Software Super Pack that was introduced last year during QuakeCon.

That means all of the games in the Super Pack are really cheap via Steam; all the Doom, Wolfenstein, Quake, Heretic/Hexen titles and expansion packs are involved in this sale (except for Enemy Territory; Quake Wars and Quake IV, the latter of which for some reason has never been available for Steam download). If you want to get all of the games at once that's the best deal of all as the entire Super Pack, priced at an already resonable $69.99, is on sale this weekend only for just $34.99. That's 22 total games for less than the price for one regular retail new PC title.

A new Disciples III: Renaissance video released, coinciding with the announcement that Akella acquired all rights to the game series from Strategy First. This relaxing video gives a short fly through of an elven tower, but shows off what fans can look forward to as it draws closer to its scheduled 2009 release.

Download the Disciples 3 Elven Tower HD Trailer (52 MB)

The Macintosh version of Spore is releasing day-and-date with the PC version but most games made to run natively on Apple's platform usually take months to head to stores, well behind their PC counterparts. Today we got a huge example of that formula when Aspyr announced that the Mac version of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare has now gone gold.

The adaptation of the best selling modern day themed shooter from developer Infinity Ward and publisher Activision was handled in-house at Aspyr's own dev studios. The port will require a Mac running an Intel-based processor and Mac OS X 10.5.4. Also, integrated video chips are not supported. The game will ship on September 15.

[Via Blue's News]

This cinematic video uses in-game graphics to introduce Atalanta, the huntress. It shows off her high agility while explaining some of her back story and why she eventually joins Jason on the Argo. Rise of the Argonauts is an action role playing game that lets players assume the role of Jason as he travels with his crew of Argonauts. The game is currently scheduled to release fall of 2008.

Download The Rise of the Argonauts Atalanta Cinematic HD Video (326 MB)

The developers of Red Faction: Guerrilla further elaborate on blowing up the world in their latest video. In Guerrilla, destroying the environment is the most powerful weapon at the player's disposal.

Download the Red Faction Guerrilla Destruction HD Trailer #2 (108 MB)

Like most zones in Cryptic Entertainment's Champions Online MMO, Snake Gulch is a big place. The Gulch used to be a thriving desert town-themed amusement park manned by friendly cowboy robots whose gun-slinging shenanigans combined perfectly with exhilarating rides to bring visitors from far and wide to the famous park.

Now, Snake Gulch sits abandoned. The mine cart ride creaks and groans along its tracks, its buggies devoid of riders, its wheels squeaky and wobbly, its tracks rusted and misshapen. Former hot spots sit dry and barren. Wind whistles a lonely cry as it escorts billowing waves of dust through dirt streets, all empty save for the robots marching rhythmically, their eyes no longer wide and friendly but blank, their hands not waving in greeting but dipped toward guns resting in holsters. Their leader: ASCII Oakley, a rootin', tootin', mean ol' cuss who, like her mechanical subordinates, has been reprogrammed by the VIPER organization to respond with hostility instead of grace to any who dare venture into Snake Gulch.

Despite the town's impressive size, a group of mild-mannered journalists who recently attended a Cryptic press event decided that the town wasn't big enough for ASCII Oakley and the rest of us. Sorry, lass: VIPER's reprogramming wasn't your fault, but you've got to go down, and hard.