With the upcoming year vastly approaching us, we’ll like to thank all of our dedicated users for their support during this unforgettable year within the gaming industry. That said, we bid you farewell until 2010, but you’ll always remain in our minds; with all the respect in world, we wish you, and your families, a safe and enjoyable holiday season.

Last week, Rockstar narrowed the release target of Red Dead Redemption to April and teased at a new trailer. That said, today, Rockstar San Diego released the new trailer entitled “My Name Is John Marston” for Red Dead Redemption, giving a more pacific release target then April, “April 27, 2010″.

Red Dead Redemption is a Western epic set at the turn of the 20th century when the lawless and chaotic badlands began to give way to the expanding reach of government and the spread of the Industrial Age. At the center of all of this maddest is John Marston, a former outlaw caught up in the uncertain times.

Heavy Rain is, undoubtedly, one of our most anticipated games of next year. However, like I stated so many times, fans need something for waiting so long, and for Heavy Rain being delayed so many times.

With that said, Quantic Dream head, David Cage, told G4 that “[they're] currently working on a demo” for Heavy Rain, and that “finding one scene that can convey what we are trying to achieve with Heavy Rain is something really difficult.”

“If we show an action scene, some players will think that this is what Heavy Rain is all about, and it is the same thing if we show an exploration scene,” he continued to tell G4. “The problem is that each scene of the game offers contextual game play, which is something very difficult to explain and convey in a single demo. Demos are often a double-edge thing: if you don’t release one, players may think that you have something to hide.”

As for a release date for the demo, it’s still unknown. But, here’s a question. Why don’t they just use the E3 demo? Heavy Rain is scheduled to launch early in 2010, exclusively for the PS3.

In the credits for Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, Naughty Dog thanked so many developers, including rival system developer Bungie – which is probably one of the most surprising things about the game’s credits. However, what’s the key meaning behind Naughty Dog thanking all these developers?

Today, Naughty Dog’s Neil Druckmann took his time explain, during a live chat session with fans, why they decided include Bungie and other development studios in the game’s thank you credits. “We try to be quite open with our technology and our process,” he said. “We exchanged technology and ideas with other developers. We wanted to make sure we thanked everyone that helped us out in some way.”

It’s hard to get that “solid frame-rate”. However, BioWare seems to have found the prefect FPS to make all the little interruptions go away. When being interviewed by VG247, BioWare’s Jesse Houston confirmed that Mass Effect 2 will run at a solid 30FPS.

“If you look at most good shooters, they lock down frame-rate at 30FPS: we’ve done the same thing. Bam. Everything’s 30FPS, streaming is fixed up,” said the associate producer for the game. ”If you remember in Mass 1, if you took a step backwards and you hit a weird stream and it’d pause for a moment. We’ve done a away with that. What you’re seeing here is pulled straight from the game.”

Talk about something not great for kids. Brutal Legend is all about the rock, the cars, hot chicks and demonic forces. Surprisingly, that sums up the 64 kilometer world that is Brutal Legend, a giant landscape filled with essentially rock album cover art, headbangers, giant guitar swords and, inevitably, the occasional cute animal that makes a funny sound when run over.

As Eddie Riggs, or Jack Black since that’s who we’re all really playing as, except with better hair and strangely large chest and broad shoulders, it’s the player’s job to bring order back to the world of rock. How you get there, what you’re doing, who the hot chicks are and where they roam…important, but not for your eyes now.

Brutal Legend is like Ratchet and Clank, except replace the sci-fi world for a down-and-dirty, and I might say awesome looking Earth-ish landscape, Ratchet’s little wrench for a giant axe and an electrifying guitar, and Clank for the occasional hot chick. Oh, and remove the platforming for an open-world feel, and get rid of the kiddy humor for something a little less tasteful, and a lot funnier.

It could be that Ozzie makes an appearance in the demo, helping players make the car Eddie puts together in ten seconds flat into something more respectable. Add on chainguns, art, an engine so big that it blocks the view from the steering wheel…you name it, it can probably be stacked on top of whatever’s on the car already.

So far, the first 15 minutes of the game were not as funny or exciting as I’d hoped. Then again, the insane standard I have, especially when I think a game will be great, doesn’t help in the slightest. Neither does the fact that it was only the first 15 minutes and I wasn’t impressed by the dialog or action incredibly. Then again, the developer commentaries I watched were more interesting, so perhaps it’s only a slow start to a much more exciting game, which I hope and expect. I mean, there’s a list of rock legends doing voice work, Jack Black to make me laugh, and eventually a completely open world to explore and, hopefully tarnish and destroy if it hasn’t been already.

Would I say I was disappointed by the demo? Eh, no. Demos can never be perfect, regardless of who makes them, and I appreciate that. It sucks I wasn’t on the floor, clutching my sides because the GAME WAS SO FUNNY HAHA, but hey, nobody’s perfect. It’s a good warmup, to the full game, so we’ll see if it leaves us hanging, or goes all the way, this Rocktober

Capcom has announced its plans to release an affordable collaboration of three of Capcom’s greatest games that have ever released on the 360 entitled the Platinum Hits Triple Pack.

The Platinum Hits Triple Pack combines Dead Rising, Lost Planet: Extreme Condition – Colonies Edition, and Devil May Cry 4 all in one box. Each of which has been awarded Platinum Hits “Best Seller” status and together have sold over 3 million units in North America alone.

This pack has the sole propose of giving any gamer that haven’t had the chance to play these titles the chance to redeem themselves for a great low price of 39.99. However, we all know that the real reason is that Capcom has too many copies of these games in stock. But, anyway you put it everyone wins.

It goes without saying that movie games suck. They do. If you’ve ever purchased one, you know that nine out of ten times, you regret that purchase, and the ten remaining percent you can’t decide whether it was actually worthwhile, or not. While it’s bad enough the GI Joe movie looks like it could very well be crap nobody wants to see, the game has remained a bit more mysterious. Until now.

The GI Joe game is similar to the recently released Wolverine title; players pick a character from the GI Joe universe and fight off bad guys. It’s much more linear, so everything is literally pointing you where to go, like Advent Rising, except without the openness. It is, in fact, an extremely closed game, but playing it by yourself is the reason why it would feel ridiculous.

GI Joe is meant to be played cooperatively. Or, more specifically, competitively for points. Two players are supposed to, with different characters utilizing different strengths and weaknesses, gather as many points as possible by fighting off the enemy, finding secrets, and stealing kills. This is tremendous fun, especially when your adversary can hear your roar of victory.

In my play-test, I wielded a sword and a pathetic pistol, while my opponent had a giant gun. Because I learned everything mentioned earlier while playing, I ran around shooting everything, and slashing the occasional bad guy when they came near. Only then did I realize my opponent had double the points I did, because his bigger gun was just wrecking the playing field. No fair!

The rest of the game was I playing catch up, and I did. I slashed everyone and everything, shot last-second and guys who had no health and stole kills like a 10 year old playing Halo 2. At one point, the developer told us both to push the Y button, and suddenly both our guns got a massive boost for a cooperative strike. Giant tanks started rolling in and we were dodging equally giant rounds that would look unseemly in the tight clothes our characters wore.

After all this, GI Joe is fun. By yourself…I can only imagine how lonely one must be to play a cooperative game alone, not even competing against an AI. As someone who didn’t grow up with GI Joe because Transformers was better, I didn’t get all the references, which the developer pointed out each and every time, to which I insincerely nodded “oh yes, I remember that. Fond memories!” Like a rail shooter, it’s fun in a quick-action sort of way, and like Wolverine, you can sit back and relax while tearing the guts out of, well, just about anything. Plus it’s great for kids!

UFC 2009 Undisputed producer Neven Dravinski has posted new details on Undisputed’s upcoming patch, stating that it has been a long time in development because the team wants to ensure it gets it right.

Patch details:

1. We recognize premature match quitting as the biggest online issue and have taken steps to fix it. The Patch will have integrated code that detects who pulls the cable and will assign a Loss as well as a Did Not Finish to that player. The DNF is only counted for the player who executes the disconnection. The DNF rate will be displayed on the fighter selection screen of the Online Ranked Match. When disconnected the Winning Streak is also reset to 0.
2. We’ve adjusted Ranked Matches to match up players with better connections, which will improve lag issues we’ve seen to date.
3. We’ve adjusted the difficulty of performing submissions against AI opponents to improve the balance of subs vs. striking when playing against the AI.
4. We’ve adjusted the Flash KO rate so that they are less frequent.
5. We’ve increased maximum number of points awarded in online play from 99,999 to 999,999 and we’ve increased the Max Level from 100 to 200.
6. We’ve lowered the Winning Streak Bonus Max from 5 to 3.
7. We’ve removed the decimal places on the Leaderboard Winning Percentage so we only show whole percentages.
8. We’ve addressed the CAF cheat so the skill levels in CAF cannot be cheated and increased. Also any CAF with unfair point values will no longer be able to be used Online.
9. For PS3 users we’ve also fixed a bug that causes a freeze during auto-save; whichever controller was used to Press Start on the Title Screen will be identified as the main controller.

[UFC 2009 patch detailed via Video Gamer]

Along with addressing most of the problems players had with the title, and four more multiplayer maps – which aren’t planned to release simultaneously. Gears of War 2′s newest updated experience ‘Snowblind’ features new achievements for the title. The achievements add up to a total of 250 achievement points. The update will of course be free.

The achievements are as follows:

Rookie Gear (10)
Seasoned Gear (20)
Battle-Tested Gear (30)
Battle-Hardened Gear (50)
Veteran Gear (75)
Never Eat Red Snow (20)
Icy Dead People (25)
Frigid Body Dynamics (5)
The Weather Outside Is Lethal (15)

Black Rock Studios have been hard at work trying to push the racing genre by developing many over the top racers, seeing that last years high-flying ATV racer, PURE, was just the tip of the iceberg. The developer is now working on a street racing game entitled, Split Second.

An exclusive trailer debuted on GameTrailer’s GTTV showing cars flying into a city with dangerous environmental hazards – which are activated by the drivers in the game. This is sure to be something worth waiting for.

Anyway, Split Second is definitely a new look at the racing genre and we believe that the guys at Black Rock Studios know what to do, to insure that this a quality racer.

We all know that Killzone 2 hasn’t released yet, but for those of us that were lucky enough to get the game early it wasn’t fun playing online mainly because the online wasn’t working well.

Anyway, Seb Downie, a producer at Guerrilla Games, announced that later on today a patch will go live fixing the ’931′ error, which displayed while going online in Killzone 2. And well it’s later on and, well, the patch has released.

“We’re on this one and have a good idea why it is occuring,” he says. “There will also be a new patch released in the next two hours to hopefully fix this. In the mean time, stay cool and normal service will resume shortly. This is the only fix included in the patch. You may experience a little bit of down-time both here and on the game servers. It may then take a while for the site and game to repopulate the stats.”

A genius parody has hit the Interweb, which was made by Kevin Pereira, entitled “Kevye West: 808’s and Expirations Dates (Guac Lockdown)”, which is an obvious pun on Kanye’s latest album, 808s and Heartbreak.

The video is a strong parody of Kanye West’s  not so great performance at SNL, which you can check it out at DailyMotion. And apparently his pitch vocal auto-correctors,  reportedly, weren’t functioning properly that performance.

Well, its finally here. The next installment on the Unreal franchise has hit the 360 and let me say its not one to miss. This first person shooter offers up enough to tear you away from the Call of Duty run you have been on for so long. Of course it is the same old song and dance with the usual modes, weapons and art style. What is new to the party is the maps and the odd attempt to change up some of the previous games modes to make them fresh and new to the user. Controls might not be as good as using a keyboard and mouse, but the 360 does a nice job at trying to keep the speed of the unreal games while still giving a lot of support to keep your eyes focused for frags. So yes the game runs fast and furious but not enough to make the game hard to play. The rest of the controls feel very good, with swapping weapons being just a breeze. Visually the game looks good, while not having the best visuals out there it does have a decent frame rate with no real slowdowns at all. Same can be said about the sound quality, with the only annoyance being that they AI likes to spout out one liners that are just terrible.

Fans of course will be use to the modes and game play elements of the franchise. Newcomers wont have a problem as well getting in on this. It has a lot to offer especially in the online department, however, the single player is kind of a failure in my opinion. The very odd try at a story mode, spanning four chapters with numerous missions in between. Modes consist of capture the node and capture the flag as actual events in a war style story that is just in poor taste. I know what they are doing in a sense, getting you ready to take your onslaught online. But it would of been best to just scrap a story and just make some tutorial levels. The saving grace in single player is the addition of online co-op which makes playing through the story mode more enjoyable since you actually have someone to help you out on some of the more difficult missions. Vehicles are back and in full force as well. Vehicles made their first appearance in Unreal Tournament 2004 and the roster has only grown. Of course the controls are nothing to drop your jaw at though. Meaning that you point your targeting reticule to an area, push forward on the left stick and your vehicle will try to make its way there, and hopefully not explode. It’s when doing battle in small areas that this can be a bit touchy due to the lack of movement. You also for some reason cant move the canon on the Goliath while moving which is kind of dumb, but nothing to be too concerned with. The AI throughout is very good as well, being very ruthless and cunning to keep you pushing and pushing until you finally over come them. They will flank and use all the tricks in the book to overcome you and take you down.

Online is of course where the game shines. The amount of modes and weapons is sure to keep you clutching your controller to get one more frag in before the round ends. the maps as well are a reason to keep playing. With the 360 version coming packed with all three of the maps released thus far on PS3 and PC as download able content as well as five exclusive levels. Of course they are all built for the specific mode you are playing but all have a very good feeling to them. The game runs very smooth and of course having XBL on your side your sure to get an easy connection with tons of players. Online is the major chunk of this game and it does everything right.

So this of course is a great online experience and is user to keep you away from the modernized combat zone for awhile, having you yell out MULTI KILL!! Every time you see it flash up on your screen. So go out and pick this one up and I’m sure you will enjoy. Hopefully we will be seeing some type of user created downloads to XBL for use to have another frag fest in.

Overall – A

Naughty Dog co-president Evan Wells told the semi-official PlayStation 3 blog Three Speech "We developed Uncharted as a franchise. The pulp action/adventure genre lends itself perfectly to serialization and continued episodes which is one of the reasons we were attracted to it," He goes on to say "Right now we are brainstorming on what Naughty Dog’s next project will be, but even if we don’t do an Uncharted sequel right away, you can pretty much count on us doing one in the near future."

He goes on to talk about the next Jak & Daxter game "Jak and Daxter is a definite possibility some time in the future," he said. "There is a lot of interest around the office in going back to that franchise and seeing what we could do with it using the Uncharted engine."

[Naughty Dog Talking Uncharted 2, New Jak via Next-Gen.biz]

Almost all the fans of Team Fortress 2 now know all about the newest character, Scout. We don’t now much about him at this time, other then the fact that he is a bat wielding SOB who is will to kick your assets from here to kingdom come. As we where saying, this new character comes equipped with what looks like a bat and a shotgun. He also acts like if he grow up in the ghetto and he’s not the person you’ll want to mess with. Watch the video and don’t forget to put what you think about the trailer: