Kotaku reports that Tiberium, EA's Command & Conquer flavored first-person shooter, has been canceled. An internal memo cited quality issues as a reason for the termination of the project, and an EA spokesperson confirmed it. "It is with a heavy heart that I announce an end to all work on Tiberium effective immediately. I've consulted with Nick Earl and Frank Gibeau at the EA Games Label and together we have reached the conclusion that given the time and resources remaining, we will not be able to deliver this product to an appropriate level of quality. The game had fundamental design challenges from the start. We fought to correct the issues, but we were not successful; the game just isn't coming together well enough to meet our own quality expectations as well as those of our consumers."

When Crysis was released last year, it immediately became known for two things; excellent gameplay and ridiculously high hardware requirements. With the recent release of Crysis Warhead, a standalone expansion to the original game, Crytek's plans were to maintain or improve the quality of gameplay while simultaneously streamlining it so a broader audience would have a chance to enjoy it. As it happens, they succeeded. Fans of the original game will feel right at home in Warhead, and it provides a good chance for new players who were curious but wary of Crysis's graphical requirements to give it a shot. Read on for my thoughts.

1Up reports on comments by Phil Spencer, head of Microsoft Game Studios, which indicated that several different teams are working on Halo projects at the moment. Quoting: "When GamesIndustry.biz then pointed out that it puts the Age of Empires franchise in a similar position as Halo after Bungie departed from their partnership with Microsoft, that's when Spencer dropped this intriguing tidbit: 'Well, there's more than one team building Halo games right now. There are more than two or three teams building Halo things right now. Some of them we will own, some of them we won't. It's never been, for me, about who you own or don't own — it's about working with the best creative talent in the industry,' he said."

Tom Willits of id Software took some time recently to speak about storytelling as it relates to id's previous games, and how it will be a part of their upcoming shooter, Rage. He also dispelled rumors that Rage would suffer content cuts due to Xbox hardware limitations. Unfortunately, he called into question whether mods will be a possibility for the game, saying that the issue is still under consideration.

With Call of Duty: World at War set to hit store shelves this November, Activision has been making plans to monetize the online component of the game. "Infinity Ward-developed CoD4 has paid downloadable maps available on digital storefronts, but with CoD5, developed by Activision studio Treyarch, downloadable content will be a considerably bigger priority. Griffith added that Activision 'plans to increase online monetization' with CoD5, offering '3x the amount of content available for download and premium content called Day One Advantage.'" Activision also announced that for Call of Duty 6 they will be going back to Infinity Ward for development, the company who developed the first, second, and fourth offerings in the series. Treyarch made the third and fifth installments.

CVG spoke with John Carmack about the in-development browser-based version of Quake III Arena called Quake Live. He discusses the development team's reasons for the new project and mentions that current mods will not work. However, he adds, "We're in no way shutting down the original Q3A scene, so anybody who wants to build things with the open-source code is still more than free to do so. That may even become a proving ground for moving things into Quake Live." Carmack also says Quake Live will be fully ad-supported to start, but "it's not out of the question that eventually we'll have some kind of a premium service. But we don't know what it's going to be yet, and we're certainly going out with the completely free-to-play model." We've looked at video clips from Quake Live in the past.

phanboy_iv writes "Fans of both of the Raven classics, Heretic and Hexen, have been trying for almost a decade to convince Raven Software to release engine source code for the games under the GPL, much like the DOOM engine on which both of them are based. Well, they finally did it! Source code is available at Sourceforge. Both of these games have had the source available for a while, but under a restrictive license that hindered ports and modifications. Now, thanks to dedicated fans, that's no longer a problem."

Gamasutra is running a feature from Game Developer magazine in which Bioshock's project leader writes about what went right and what went wrong making last year's award-winning shooter, Bioshock. He talks about what the developers learned from fans and focus groups, how long it took them to firmly define what the game was supposed to be, and how they tried to reconcile their ideas with their capabilities. Quoting: "...just after the first beta, the entire design team plus a contingent of 2K producers headed off to see how a group that knew nothing about our company or BioShock would react to the first level. It was brutal. The first level, they said, was overly dense, confusing, and not particularly engaging. Players would acquire new powers but not know how to use them, so they stuck to using more traditional weapons and became frustrated. They didn't interact with the Big Daddies, and they didn't understand (or care) how to modify their characters. They were so overwhelmed by dialogue and backstory that they missed key information. A few of the players did start to see the possible depth of the game, but even they were frustrated by the difficulty of actually using the systems we had created."

Today Bethesda released walkthrough videos for their upcoming action RPG, Fallout 3. Joystiq has posted the trailers, which contain gameplay footage from the starting area and the city "Megaton," as well as combat scenarios and other features. One fight showcases the targeting system, which they demonstrate by targeting and then shooting off an enemy's arm. Another shows off the ability to create and use improvised weapons. Also shown are the lock picking and computer hacking mini-games, pickpocketing (or depositing something nasty in somebody's pocket), and general nuclear mayhem. Further detail is available at Shacknews.

After the first announcement on 1997-04-27 and over eleven years of fresh start after fresh start, Duke Nukem Forever finally comes to your system. At least if your system is an Xbox 360. Jon Siegler, the webmaster of 3D Realms, confirms this on their site: "As has been reported around the net today, we can confirm that the game has indeed passed final certification with Microsoft on Friday the 15th of August (on our first try, no less). That means the game is done — it is now in the hands of Microsoft." Update: 08/19 10:47 GMT by T : Several readers have written with a correction: this announcement is actually about Duke Nukem 3D, rather than Duke Nukem Forever.

QuakeMaster33 writes "The first public footage of id Software's upcoming Quake Live title comes in the form of a collection of high definition videos from tournament matches held at QuakeCon 2008. The event held a 1v1 and CTF tournament with prize money totaling $25,000. Included in the video set is the finals match between the 17-year-old Belarusian Alexey "cypher" Yushanevsky and the American John "ZeRo4" Hill. All of the videos are available for download or streaming via Flash video. QuakeLive, which is currently in the public beta testing phase, is a free, web-based version of Quake III Arena which includes updated graphics and gameplay. On the developer front for QuakeLive, id has plans for custom maps, but mod support is far behind. On the Linux front, id Software's resident Linux guru Timothee Bisset is working on the project, so we can only hope that if the game becomes popular, a Linux client is also made available."

CVG is running an interview with Kevin Cloud, executive producer at id, and Eric Biessman, who leads Raven Software's programmers and artists, about the upcoming installment to the Wolfenstein series. They provide some detail about what kind of weapons will be available, what those crazy Nazis are up to this time, and BJ Blazkowicz's new ability to "shroud" himself. "Press a single button, at any time, and you'll see the other side of reality: a green and violent dimension that's filled with strange creatures and whirling tornadoes of energy. Just being in the shroud gives you options: floating above the ground are 'collectors' - fleshy heavy metal album cover worms that are scavenging electrical energy. Pop them, with a single rifle round, and they'll blast apart, damaging enemies in the real world. They are essentially exploding, hidden, organic barrels. ...In shroud mode, too, occult symbols etched into the masonry are transformed into holes in walls that BJ can simply step, shoot, or lob a grenade through."

RPS has a great trailer for the new browser-based Quake Live game currently in beta. While it might make the community contribution which has sanded the rough edges off of any of the installments to the franchise a little harder, another round of fragging that I can pick up from any browser could be hugely fun.

kilrathu writes "Longtime proponents of using video games as sources of learning, the Federation of American Scientists put its money where its mouth is. FAS released Immune Attack, an educational video game designed to teach immunology to AP level high school students and combines the most current research on teaching methodologies with a 3D first-person shooter game. 'The key to the game was making sure it was fun while also covering accurate and complex immunology topics,' said Dr. Michelle Lucey-Roper, director of the FAS Learning Technologies Program. The game is free, although not open source, and can be downloaded here. Sorry, no Mac version yet."

An anonymous reader writes "At the Research@Intel Day 2008, Intel showed a ray-traced version of Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. Compared to the original game, a water with reflections and refractions and a physically correct glass shader were added. Also, a camera portal with up to 200 recursions to itself has been demonstrated. To show off this ongoing research in the topic of real-time ray tracing, a four-socket system with quad cores has been used that allowed rendering the enhanced visual effects in 1280x720 at 14-29 fps. Just two years before, early versions of Quake 4: Ray Traced ran only at 256x256 with 17 fps. Even though Intel's upcoming Larrabee will be primarily a rasterizer, the capabilities for also doing ray tracing on it should deliver interesting opportunities."

Voltageaav writes "Recent studies indicate that in both First Person Shooters and even athletic competitions, wearing red gives you an advantage. It's speculated that this distracts the other team slightly due to the psychological aspect of people turning red when angry." Of course the Blue Team loses — as evidence I submit the history of the Detroit Lions.

The opposable thumbs blog is reporting that despite a lack of BioShock 2, a third installment of the BioShock universe has been confirmed. "Take Two's Chairman Strauss Zelnick let the news slip during a conference call to investors. The third installment will apparently be strongly linked to the also recently-announced BioShock movie. 'Its unlikely the picture would be released coincident with BioShock 2,' Strauss said of the upcoming film. 'It's more likely it would be released coincident with BioShock 3.'"

EA and Crytek have announced a sequel to Crysis , one of the highest rated games of last year. Unfortunately, it seems that still only PC users will be able to celebrate the good news. "In Crysis Warhead, players will don the Nanosuit of Sergeant Sykes, also known as 'Psycho', one of the most memorable characters from Crysis. More brash and aggressive than his Delta Force squadmate Nomad, players will experience Psycho's parallel story during the events of the original game, finding that life on the other side of the island is even more intense and explosive than they ever could have imagined. Luckily, Psycho's Nanosuit is just as capable and he's equipped with an even bigger arsenal of fully customizable weapons and new vehicles, giving players access to the tools they need to dominate any situation. Aside from this new, exciting single player campaign, Crysis Warhead will also feature new multiplayer content."

An anonymous reader writes "The Jace Hall Show launched today on Sony's Crackle with a real gameplay preview of Duke Nukem Forever. Jace Hall is a former video game producer and Warner Bros exec and apparently this is his foray into online celebrity. DNF is 12 years in development ... it might be real after all." And if you have had enough self-indulgent gaming-news patter, another reader says "If you want to simply skip right ahead, it's about 4:20 in."

Kotaku has a great writeup on some of their gamplay impressions from the new game, Dark Void. "Dark Void is basically Crimson Skies with on-foot combat. That may be overgeneralizing things, but Ed Fries co-founder at Airtight Games and former Microsoft Game Studios guy essentially pitched the game as such at Capcom's Captivate 08 event as the type of game that the team wanted to make. With a mechanic the studio is referring to as "vertical cover combat," Dark Void looks to distinguish itself from the 3D action game crowd by way of Crimson Skies know-how and a sci-fi mythology that pits man against alien invader, selectively borrowing from classic science fiction properties in intelligent places."