The Call of Duty series is a benchmark for first-person shooters. The first title refreshed the already-tired World War II setting by added a gripping gameplay-based narrative, while the second was an important launch title for the Xbox 360. The newest chapter in the series, Call of Duty 4, is a new standard for the series and the genre. Set in modern times, the title breaks the mold of previous CoD titles in other ways as well. Most intriguing is its online 'character' development system, which takes some of the great ideas used in Battlefield 2 to the next level. Though the game suffers somewhat from overly-familiar gameplay in the single-player component, you'll probably be too busy gawking at the scenery to care. Read on for my impressions of this extremely attractive series update.

"PC Gaming is dying," the analysts tell us. "The Massive genre is the only viable business model left," websites report. That they're off the mark is obvious to anyone that's actually played a PC game in the last few years; games like Sam and Max , Battlefield 2 , or any of the numerous puzzle titles available online prove the flexibility and strength of the PC platform. Then, every once in a while, you get an offering like the Orange Box. A value-packed storm of content from Valve, this single sku offers five complete games at an amazing price. That would be great, even if the games weren't any good ... but they are. They're very, very, very good. Read on for my impressions of Half-Life 2: Episode 2, Team Fortress 2, and (the cake is a lie) Portal.

mytrip passed on a link to a PC World post about a unique accessory for FPS gamers. Called the 3rdSpace Gaming Vest, its goal is to translate in-game impacts into physical sensations. "Designed by a surgeon, the vest was originally created for use in the medical field to poke and prod patients in order to get a sense for what they were feeling. Since then, the vest has been adapted for the game industry, capable of delivering hits and shots exactly where you would feel them. Utilizing air pouches — four on front, four in back — the vest nudges and jabs gamers at eight different contact points."

Eurogamer notes that the beta demo for Unreal Tournament 3 is now available over at Fileplanet. "Currently the open beta demo is only available to Windows users, and will give you all a chance to test out a couple of maps and then leave your feedback for Epic Games so it can make a more polished end product - like a shoe."

Alienkillerrace writes "Linux.com has reviewed the brand new release of Alien Arena 2007, giving it a glowing review. 'New Alien Arena 6.10 blows away its FPS competition' claims that Alien Arena is now the very best of the freeware FPS games, surpassing even Tremulous."

The British gaming magazine Edge, which has teamed up with the website Next Generation, offers up a piece looking back at the creation of System Shock 2 . The cult classic storytelling horror-themed FPS has survived as a popular and often-referenced game despite the eight years between now and its release. The piece covers the reasons behind that popularity, as well as the 'horror' of an inexperienced team taking on a dauntingly high-profile task: "The original System Shock was one of the games that made Levine want to move into the videogame industry in the first place. What made it so special? 'The feeling of being in a real place,' he raves. 'The feeling of a mystery, of unraveling it - not in an adventure game way, but in the context of an action game. You arrive and... what happened? That's a really good storytelling mechanism.' Austin Grossman and Doug Church's original idea from Shock was something Irrational expanded in its sequel. 'In Shock 1 you were a specific guy, you had a backstory,' Levine notes. 'With Shock 2, I started you out with the classic 'wake up with amnesia'.'"

Next Generation is reporting on comments from Epic's Mark Rein, who participated in an IRC chat with some members of the Unreal community recently. In the chat, Rein revealed that Unreal Tournament 3 will not feature the ability for PS3 and PC players to compete on the same servers. Said Rein, "We looked at how this would impact our ability to respond quickly to things happening at internet speed on the PC side of the equation and realized that this would not be in the best interests of our very loyal PC userbase because we would constantly be holding on to updates to wait until they passed cert on the console platform. Our PC fanbase is of ultimate importance to us. They are our bread and butter. We can't let them down or compromise their experience in any way to accommodate cross platform play."

Via Eurogamer comes the news that Beta signups for Hellgate: London have begun. Folks looking forward to the unique blend of FPS/RPG/MMOG can sign up at the official site. From Eurogamer's blurb: "If you're one of the lucky ones pulled out of the gruesome sorting hat, you'll have a chance to get to grips with the ambitious multiplayer part of the game. You might remember that there are two tiers for this; one is a limited and free version, the other asks for a monthly subscription of [about $14] in return for bundles of exciting bits and pieces - player housing, extensive guild options, enormous raid encounters, loads of items to collect, and more. It forms an integral part of the package developer Flagship Studios will be offering when the full game launches on 2nd November."

BioShock, the moody drama-driven FPS for the Xbox 360 and PC, was released last month to rave reviews from the major gaming news sites. Since then the internet has been ablaze with outcry about the game's high rating scores. It's hard to understand why. The work of Ken Levine and Irrational Games on the spiritual successor to System Shock 2 is sublime. It's incredibly atmospheric, the game's story is well written and compellingly told, and the first-person shooter gameplay is a respectable, tightly crafted experience. It's a really, really good game. I'll tell you now: it's a 5/5. So why all the angst? Why the backlash? Read on for my review of BioShock, and a few comments on the dangers of 'merely' being a good game.

Via GamePolitics, a story reported by the St. Lois Post-Dispatch of frustrated war veterans protesting America's Army . Roughly 100 veterans of the Iraq war marched near an elaborate demonstration of the military-funded game, outside of an expo center in Missouri. Their shouts of 'war is not a game' must have contrasted sharply with the elaborate simulator the Army had set up to publicize their (already very popular) FPS title.

Last weekend the dark horde of nerddom descended on Seattle, entering the heart of the 'Emerald City' to gorge itself on the music, culture, and humor of gaming. The Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) once again brought together fans of the influential webcomic for a festival that, without even trying, seems to be taking the place of old E3. Though they were expecting around 30,000 people, the word was that by early Sunday they'd already gone through some 40,000 badges. There were DSes everywhere, concerts at night, a packed exhibit hall, and benchmark comic strips created by Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins adorned almost every wall. Despite all the people and the noise, somehow the event had a community feel to it that was hard to understand ... and even harder to describe. I'll try, though, along with impressions from games on the show floor and the incredible music of folks like Jonathan Coulton and the Minibosses. Read on, and All Hail Ball.

Another year, another Gen Con? Hardly. This year was the 40th anniversary of Gen Con, marked the announcement of the newest edition of Dungeons and Dragons, and was the first year videogame companies were actively sought out as exhibitors. Put together this resulted in what felt like record crowds, a healthy dealer's hall, and an instant conversation-starter with every other person at the event. Read on for notes on the new tabletop releases, thoughts on the new edition of D&D, impressions of the videogames that were in attendance, and a shameful admission of weakness.

coondoggie writes "Internet service providers in the US experienced a service slowdown Monday after fiber-optic cables near Cleveland were apparently sabotaged by gunfire. TeliaSonera AB, which lost the northern leg of its US network to the cut, said that the outage began around 7 p.m. Pacific Time on Sunday night. When technicians pulled up the affected cable, it appeared to have been shot up over a length of a kilometer. 'Somebody had been shooting with a gun or a shotgun into the cable,' said a TeliaSonera spokesman. The company declined to name the service provider whose lines had been cut, but a source familiar with the situation said the lines are owned by Level 3 Communications Inc. Level 3 could not be reached for comment."

According to a senior designer on the 2K Boston (formerly Irrational) game Bioshock a number of publishers turned them down when the company brought the title to their doorstep. "Ken (Levine) spent years pitching the game to publishers but no one was interested, incredible as that seems now. I joined Irrational in December 2004 and my first job was to get a publishing deal for the game (I worked as the Business Development Director for the first six months). I remember pitching the game to one publisher who later told a friend of mine that it was 'just another f-ing PC FPS that's going to sell 250,000 units." Just in case you didn't catch it over the weekend, there's a demo for the game up on Xbox Live. PC owners hold tight: a PC demo is coming, and hopefully before the game launches on the 21st.

Dr. Eggman writes "This past week quite whispers and rumors became fact as two FPS giants, id and Valve joined forces to bring id games back catalog to Valve's Steam. This marks a huge influx of old classics as well as opening up the possibility of bringing some of the newest, most anticipated id games to Steam. That wasn't the only news, of course. There were many announcements by the FPS veteran: Quake Wars is slated for October 2nd release. Quake 3 is coming to Xbox Live Arcade. Their next big game is called Rage , and will feature the id Tech 5 platform technology. All the details can be found in Eurogamer's full convention report. Probably the most interesting news from id was the revelation that they're working on a web-browser based version of Quake 3 . It's going to be completely free, supported by ad revenues."

In a refreshing turn, over at Newsweek's LevelUp blog N'Gai has some suitably chastising commentary on the newly-announced FPS entitled simply THEY. This overly-simplistic name is accompanied by a nearly informationless press release, and reinforces the idea that whatever THEY is, it's not worth looking into. "Generally, the role of a press release is to inform. But having read the THEY press release, all we've taken away from it is hyperbole and buzzwords, assembled Mad Libs-style for maximum unintended hilarity. What is THEY? Apparently, THEY is a 'next generation mystery first person shooter for PC and next generation consoles.' Who are THEY, you ask? ''THEY' are huge--'THEY' are different--'THEY' are hostile!' How good will THEY be? It's 'so mysterious, so stunning and so amazing--that 'THEY' might become one of the most anticipated world premiere titles from this year's Games Convention!'"

Might E. Mouse writes "Cynics might say 'Who needs a storyline for an FPS game?' and if we're talking Quake or Doom then fair enough. But to brand the entire genre as lacking in story is to condemn gems like Half-Life 2 or Chronicles of Riddick. So what goes into writing a really compelling storyline for an FPS game? bit-tech has an article exploring this topic with the likes of Martin Lancaster, writer / designer for Crysis, Rob Yescombe, writer of Haze and more: 'There's nothing wrong with that of course, back in the day Quake was amazing in its own, essentially plotless, right. But it's interesting that only recently has a push for coherently told storylines appeared among FPS fans, bought on by another few years of maturity in what is an undeniably young medium. Paintings and music have both been around since time out of mind, but computer games have only been around for a couple of decades and only recently have they begun to be recognized for the artistic merit posed by their interactivity.'"

CVG has the disappointing news, originally reported in the pages of EGM, that online co-op play will not be available when Halo 3 launches this September. In the game the second player would play the part of the Arbiter character, but fans will only be able to complete the campaign cooperatively via LAN or split-screen. Bungie stated the possibility still exists online co-op could be patched in at a later date, but significant hurdles stand in the way of the feature: "'We're not dumb,' says Bungie's Frank O'Conner. 'We know that people want it and we're trying to make it happen. I think the biggest problem for us for online co-op is that we have a situation where you can be in a Warthog with five troops, almost a mile away from the other player. That's a significant challenge. And there's lots of design things you could do to prevent that from happening, but they would make it not feel like Halo anymore. If we can make it happen in a way that works well, we will - and if it works badly, we won't.'"

First Person Shooters are getting ever more involved. It's no longer sufficient just to ape Doom or Half-Life, and FPS titles at this year's E3 bear that out. Kotaku has a look at the fascinating title Haze. It has a deep story for a shooter, with the main character forced to make a difficult moral choice in the course of his work. Haze also introduces a number of interesting game mechanics, such as the ability to feign death in an attempt to trick your enemies. Joystiq, meanwhile, spent time with the most gorgeous-looking PC game of the year: Crysis. "Crysis is a joy for its subtleties, and for its complexities. We watched as [executive producer for Crysis Rob] Letts haphazardly caused enough commotion for an enemy combatant to fire a flare out over the tree tops. A minute later, reinforcements arrived by boat and by jeep. Some time later, over the ridge, troops who had spotted the flare earlier where still on alert. Letts spoke of a basic set of variables (the whos, whats, and wheres), which when applied to a dynamic environment, provide the player with ever-unpredictable 'action bubbles.' While there is a narrative structure to Crysis and a series of well-documented twists (two major environmental upheavals that change the nature of gameplay), Letts seemed most proud of the 'sandbox' nature of Crytek's tactical shooter."

Although Metroid Prime 3: Corruption and Super Mario Galaxy were both touched on at the Nintendo press conference ... it didn't really seem like enough. Thankfully, there are plenty of hands-on writeups to satisfy interested parties. Wired's Game|Life has almost nothing but praise for Metroid. Specifically, Chris Kohler singles out the FPS controls as proving the concept for him on the system. 1up is equally pleased with Mario. They cite its unconventional nature as initially offputting, but ultimately one of the things they enjoyed most about the game. "We simply love the way the game feels. Many gamers are of the opinion that Super Mario Sunshine strayed too far from the fundamentals of the series by focusing so heavily on the water cannon/jet pack, but Galaxy puts the emphasis right back on jumping and stomping foes. The controls are tight and the graphics are crisp, if not exactly a dead ringer for top-of-the-line Xbox 360 visuals. And tiny references to games past are everywhere, from the usual coins, to Goombas of unusual size, to "?" blocks that appear as crystalline squares that can be kicked around the levels as weapons or stomped on to yield rewards."