I’ll be honest, I may have cried a little manly happy tear. The return of “Big Green”, or Master Chief Petty Officer Spartan John-117 to give him his Sunday name, is a most welcome one for fans of the Halo franchise worldwide. The previous two instalments (the God awful real-time strategy, Halo Wars, and the rather excellent Halo: Reach) were prequels and so the Chief didn’t make an appearance, and the one before that was based on a different character during the time of Halo 3.

We last saw him at the end of Halo 3 entering a stasis pod on the derelict hulk of the ship that he, the Arbiter of the Covenant, and his companion Cortana used to escape the ring-world.

I’m trying not to get too excited, because there’s a catch. The new games are not being developed by the franchise’s previous gatekeepers, Bungie. Instead the torch has passed to 343 Industries, a subsidiary of Microsoft Game Studios created specifically to oversee the development of Halo; they even take their name from an in-game character, 343 Guilty Spark.

Already 343 have taken a minor liberty with the story – just a minor one – in that when the Chief bursts out of his stasis pod in the teaser trailer his armour seems to be equipped with some kind of rocket pack that he didn’t have going in.

On the plus side, the big shiny planet thing at the end of clip looks awfully like the description of Shield-World Onyx where, according to the supporting novels, the last surviving Spartans and their creator, Dr Halsey are holed up.

The new game will be the first in a new trilogy and, although it’s officially called Halo 4, it will actually be the seventh title to take place in the Halo universe, meaning the closing chapter of the new trilogy (presumably Halo 6) will be the ninth game of the series.

I can’t see it ending there though, if for no other reason than Halo: X is too good a name to let go to waste.

Here’s the trailer. Check it out for yourself.

John Cleese, Michael Fassbender, Sir Ben Kingsley, Simon Pegg, Jonathon Ross and Bernard Hill have all lent their voices to characters in Fable III, with Kingsley affecting a Welsh accent specially for the occasion. It is the first time Sir Ben has done videogame voice-acting and, as an Oscar winner and respected theatrical actor, his presence should provide the medium with a real credibility boost. Fry and Wanamaker reprise their roles as Reaver and Theresa respectively for the third game in the series.

The game’s developers Lionhead have released a series of Youtube videos offering an insight into the voice recording process featuring some of the leading actors.

The first 4 games of the series were released between 1991 and 1994, and were available on the Sega Mega Drive and the Sega Genesis. The games  were; Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and Sonic and Knuckles. Sonic and Knuckles had  lovely game port built into the top of it, which allowed you to plug the three former games into the top, and play as Knuckles in the other games. I am proud to say I still have all four of these games for my Mega Drive, because they are too good to get rid of.

Of course, with a series this popular, there were bound to be a lot of spin-off games. These included Sonic Spinball, Dr Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine and Sonic 3D. And I loved all of these games too, because they still had the old Sonic charm. But then it all went a bit wrong.

New generation games consoles started releasing Sonic games, and because I’m an uber fan, I bought a couple of them. The only good one of these that I played was a collection of all the old Mega Drive games on one disc for the PlayStation 2. This was amazing because you could save the game. No one knows real pain until they have made it to the metal Sonic boss in Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and he kills you, when you have no lives and no continues. So close, and yet so far. You had to start from the beginning and it was heart breaking. It seemed my love for Sonic had to stay in the 1990s, along with my childhood.

But, Sonic may have been saved at the last hurdle. This month sees the release of Sonic 4, which is a continuation of the original series and it’s in 2D! Well the backgrouds are anyway. And we still have the lovely side-scrolling way of making your way through the levels. Now this may seem like a step backwards, but all of Sonic’s charm was the 2D aspect. The first 3D game was fine, but everything since that was trying to make Sonic modern, and failing.

Sonic 4 is available through the PlayStation Network, Xbox Arcade, WiiWare and Apple’s App Store, and I personally cannot wait to play Sonic as he was supposed to be played; with only 2 dimensions.

Image via Wikipedia

The common or garden zombie has been a horror movie staple for over four decades, since American director reinvented the modern gore flick in Night of the Living Dead in 1968. Romero’s groundbreaking film and its 1978 sequel Dawn of the Dead took the zombie from its roots as an obscure creature in Haitian folklore and turned it into the iconic flesh-eating monstrosity we know and love today, while combining stomach-churning scenes of violence and gore with social commentary just as biting as the supernatural horrors themselves.

Zombies have gradually evolved over the years from the shambling, shuffling reanimated corpses that attack en masse seen in Romero’s early films to the cunning and more socially aware creatures that appear in his later movies, like Day of the Dead. After resting in relative obscurity for most of the 1980s and early 90s, zombies suddenly stirred back to life in 1995 with the release of legendary Playstation horror game Resident Evil. While not the first zombie-inspired title, Resident Evil and its sequels and spin-offs firmly established the creature in the pantheon of classic videogame nasties and its Romero-inspired shlock-horror aesthetics served as a creative fodder for a whole new generation of creative minds.

In 1999 British TV and film director Edgar Wright paid tribute to Resident Evil in a classic episode of his cult sitcom Spaced, which later encouraged him to develop the feature length romantic zombie comedy Shaun of the Dead. In 2002 another British director, Danny Boyle, turned the zombie sub-genre on its head with the groundbreaking film 28 Days Later. The movie’s zombies were a departure from the Romero-inspired canon that had formed the bedrock of genre conventions for over thirty years, replacing the lumbering, decaying hulks with fast, agile and viciously aggressive creatures. The classic sense of creeping and inevitable doom that characterised the zombie flick was replaced with an adrenaline-fueled unpredictability that represented a real departure from what had come before.

While fan reactions to 28 Days Later were mixed, the film and its sequel was a major source of inspiration for one of most successful zombie-related releases of recent years, Valve Software’s Left 4 Dead videogame franchise. The game features the ‘fast’ zombies introduced by Boyle and integrates them into the Romero mythology in a series of classic locations ranging from shopping malls to hospitals and churches. The most recent versions of the Resident Evil franchise has introduced their own versions of the modern speedy zombie, even while titles like Dead Rising and its imminent sequel have harked back to the classic ‘slow’ version of the creature.

The 2009 film Zombieland perhaps marked the high water mark for zombie films in the mainstream, combining cult horror conventions with inventive comedy and dozens of mainstream cultural references, including an extended cameo by Ghostbusters star Bill Murray. The continued success of the zombie as a horror movie staple and its slow but steady shuffle into the mainstream is a testament to the enduring influence and power of George A Romero’s early work. Even if straight-to-DVD projects like The Horde turn out to be commercial or creative flops, it seems unlikely that zombies are going to go away anytime soon.

With Guitar Hero, Rock Band and other games of the same type we now have more music games than we will ever really need. So with the details of Rock Band 3, coming out this winter, just being released, what makes it so different that we’ll want to buy it?

I love playing these kinds of music based games, so I am very excited about Rock Band 3 coming out. Especially because they are introducing a new instrument in the form of a keyboard. Yet another instrument to try and master, it can be played as a standard keyboard, or (if you’re really cool) held like a keytar. They have also included the feature from The Beatles Rock Band and Green Day Rock Band, meaning you can have up to 3 singers singing in harmony. This means there is a potential to have 7 band members playing at once. Probably not recommended if you live above anyone else.

Another feature is the new Pro Mode, complete with new Pro instruments. This mode is intended to get you to actually learn the instrument you are playing. I think this is great, because now when I get the abuse of “why don’t you learn a real instrument instead of playing Xbox all day”, I will have a better argument.

As well as that it boasts 83 new song, spanning 5 decades, so hopefully there should be something for everyone.

And if none of that floats your boat, there is always the easy Xbox achievements that these games offer (10g for making a rocker, yes please), so you can justify playing them instead of spending hours on other more taxing games.

Image via Tech Saver

Games publisher Ubisoft have come in for some considerable flak over plans to implement a new DRM and copy-protection approach to their PC games.

Back in January, the publisher announced that to play or save any Ubisoft games on PC then the user would require to be permanently connected to the internet so that Ubisoft’s servers could check users were playing a legitimate copy.

Such a plan causes major headaches for users; the ability to play Ubisoft games will be severely restricted in cases where no internet access is possible. And with the always-possible scenario of a server crash or a network failure, there is a real lack of flexibility in Ubisoft’s plans.

As indicated by Computer and Video games magazine, if you get disconnected while playing, you’re booted out of the game and all your progress since the last checkpoint or save game is lost.  From here, your only options are to quit back to Windows or wait until you’re reconnected to the game but of course, you’ll be back to where the game was last saved..  imagine playing for hours, finally getting past a difficult part of the game and *pop*, your net connection drops before you’ve hit the next save point?

You’ll be faced with the task of having to re-do it all again – a prospect that won’t appeal to the majority of gamers.

The only real benefit from Ubisoft’s approach is the ability to store saved games online and sync them with other PCs but with many similar services also available, such as Dropbox this is a small benefit.

And according to CVG during their review of latest Ubisoft products Assassin’s Creed 2 and Settlers VII, the game won’t even run if there’s no internet connection available, so unawares gamers with no internet connection could potentially be shelling out for a game they can’t play.

Ubisoft’s approach will see their games driven into the hands of software pirates, and the very thing they are trying to combat could in turn hit them hard as legitimate buyers are driven to torrent sites to obtain copies of Ubisoft’s games.

The phrase ‘Epic DRM fail’ come to mind.

In the trailer, you’ll be able to visit Qo’noS, the Klingon’s home base as wekk as some good looking space battles featuring Klingon Birds of Prey and Federation starships.

More downloadable content is coming to Red Faction: Guerrilla according to THQ.

Following the recent release of Demons of the Badland DLC pack, THQ has announced details of a second DLC pack which will feature two new playmodes – Bagman and Team Bagman, as well as eight new maps which will be playabe across all multiplayer modes.

The Red Faction: Guerilla Multiplayer Pack will be available from September 17th on Xbox live, costing 560 Microsoft points. It will cost $6.99 for players on the PlayStation network.

You can view the release video for the Multiplayer Pack on THQ’s Red Faction: Guerilla community page.

A third DLC pack is planned for release in October, although no details of what the pack might contain are currently unavailable.

It’s clearly a hard thing to do but we looked through the YouTube comments. A lot of people are trying to compare this to Gran Turismo 5 – which is tricky as neither game is out.

There’s also a raging debate as to whether cutting corners in the game should be allowed. DiRT certainly lets you cut corners but some gamers are suggesting improvements would be made if the game penalised such shady tactics.

Good news heroes. Earthworm Jim is making a comeback.

The much loved and funny Earthworm Jim character hasn’t had console success in about ten years. It’s been announced that Gameloft has sorted out a deal with the developer Interplay.

Which consoles will Earthworm Jim appear? We don’t have all the details yet but WiiWare, PSN and even mobiles have been strongly linked to the franchise. The charismatic earthworm first appeared in 1999 on the N64.

“Earthworm Jim resonates with millions of people worldwide and we are excited to have one of the best developers in the industry create this game for a new audience,” Interplay CEO Herve Caen told press.

He added, “The game, with its humorous and edgy style, is a great fit for today’s gamer who craves a fully immersive experience that is fun and easily accessible. We look forward to delivering a fantastic game,”