GameDaily has up a piece looking at the history of Gears of War , which was released this past Tuesday. The game's history is also the tale of developer Epic Games, which grew from a garage group to one of the biggest names in FPS titles. Beyond that, though, "'Gears has a sordid history,' said [Epic Founder Tim] Sweeney. 'Initially, we planned to take the Unreal franchise in a more large-scale combat direction, more like Battlefield 1942. So we began this project called Unreal Warfare and spent a few years developing that. We realized we wanted the real focus to be on a single-player game with realistic combat. Around the same time, we were developing Unreal Tournament 2003 with Digital Extremes. We took the efforts from Unreal Warfare — it had a lot of the early ideas of Gears of War — and merged that into the Unreal 2003 project. From that you saw the Unreal game take on the large-scale combat — the Onslaught style of game.'"

Ant writes "Destructoid has its own list (with screen shots) of some of the best levels of all time in computer and video games. Ranging from FPS titles to racing games, the list attempts to run down some of the best levels from a number of game genres." From the article: "Bark At The Moon - This is the Guitar Hero song you bust out when you want to impress your friends. Speaking as someone who has beaten the game on Expert, I don't really know why it was the last song in the game: apart from the second solo, which you can survive through strategic use of Star Power, the song is relatively easy. I personally have a much harder time getting through Cowboys From Hell. Nonetheless, the near-constant barrage of notes and chords and hammer-ons and hammer-offs make you look like a total badass, assuming you can pass it. And if you can't, well, there's always Ace of Spades."

kalpatin writes "The ever so popular game, Counter Strike:Source developed by Valve, has a new feature added to the game: A virtual marketplace for the weapons and equipment. According to Valve, every item's price will be updated on a weekly basis depending on the global market demand. Some users have posted their anger toward the new change on the Valve forums and have even started a petition to stop the change. Is Valve turning into Microsoft by introducing features that are not needed or wanted by the community, or are they merely spicing the game up?"

simoniker writes "The CEO of Vancouver company Threewave, famous for creating Capture The Flag, has been explaining their current project — multiple versions of a free, ad-supported FPS: 'We'd like to provide sponsored content that also supports the brand of the FPS, allowing it to have a whole stream of maps that are available month after month, featuring different product placement each time. Maybe in a Jeep-Chrysler level you'll be able to drive their vehicles. Maybe a Pepsi branded level where you jump through a Pepsi logo to materialise somewhere else.' He also noted: 'For example, one of the projects that we completed recently... features terrorists taking over the Alienware computer factory.'"

1up is reporting on Sony's 'answer' to Microsoft's Xbox Live system: XFire. The PC-based game networking service is already extremely popular among FPS and MMOG players. Financial reports indicate the service will now be extended to the PlayStation 3 as well. From the article: "By incorporating an existing service into their own PlayStation Network Platform (PNP), Sony hopes to circumvent existing problems in the console space that Microsoft has had to sort out and in using Xfire -- a company with an established messaging, matchmaking and gaming client -- Sony hopes to narrow the four-year gap in online gaming services that Microsoft currently enjoys (Xfire has been around since 2002)."

The folks behind the now shut-down Halogen Halo mod noticed your concerns in the comments for Saturday's story. Adam Saltsman, a team member, took the time to answer some of the questions you posed. He touches on why they bothered to do it in the first place, and the much discussed issue of 'getting permission from Microsoft'. From his comments: "MS Games is, not surprisingly, a game company. Therefore, they will happily and cheerfully support machinima ads for their own game made for free by other people. However, they are quite touchy (to an extent that we did not previously understand) about people making GAMES about their games." Many thanks to Adam for putting this together for us. Read on for his complete response.

1up had the chance to sit down with Valve to talk about Half-Life 2: Episode 2, Portal, and Team Fortress 2. They've come away with some great information, with probably the most exciting information focused around Portal. In a writeup of the visit, Matt Leone reveals that Portal is actually a part of the Half-Life 2 world. The protagonist is a new character, and eventually the fascinating puzzle/fps title will hook back into the Half-Life story at large. From the article: "'The origins of this character will be clear... eventually,' says Swift. Given that Portal has now been in development for just over a year, we wouldn't be surprised to see a few retroactive references pop up in Episode 1 as well, but for specifics we'll have to wait to hear more from the creepy narrator that taunts you while you play (yep, the same one from the first trailer)." For video and all the details, check out yesterday's episode of the 1up show.

basscomm writes "IGN has gotten their hands on the 'Killer' NIC recently mentioned here on Slashdot and have written a two part article detailing their impressions: 'The performance boost we got out of the Killer NIC in this testing exceeds Bigfoot Networks' own claims of 10-15% gains by a long shot and certainly seems to validate the potential of the technology. We suspect, however, that the fact that these computers were marginal at running F.E.A.R. in the first place had an impact in the comparison. In many cases the non-Killer NIC machine became absolutely bogged down as particles flew and grenades exploded, enough so that the entire machine would hang for a moment as things got sorted out. Obviously this murdered average fps figures.'"

simoniker writes "As voted by game industry professionals, the results of the Quantum Leap Awards for the first-person shooter genre have been revealed, honoring the titles which 'brought the FPS genre forward' in the biggest ways. The winner is a truly classic title, but there's at least one seminal FPS that, surprisingly enough, didn't make the top 5." The top 5 are, from 1 to 5, Half-Life, Quake, GoldenEye, Wolfenstein, and System Shock 2.

Via Joystiq, a post on the JumpButton blog talking with a PR manager at Ubisoft about the title Beyond Good and Evil. Despite critical acclaim and crackerjack gameplay, the title just didn't do very well commercially. The rep explains why it did so badly in the stores, and what that means for future quality game titles. From the article: "When BG&E was released in 2003, it was competing against some of the strongest franchises in gaming. Like a weak wolf cub in a litter, it was forced to fight its siblings for attention and nurturing. Strong brands such as Tom Clancy and the reinvented Prince of Persia were the favourite sons that year. While XIII, a stylish FPS based on an obscure Belgian graphic novel, almost suffered a similar fate to BG&E, but sales in European territories still managed to qualify that game for Sony's best-seller Platinum label. It was only late in the piece that IGN.com managed to arm us with a majestic and summarizing quote for the difficult BG&E: 'Zelda for grown-ups.'"

Via Joystiq, an IGN story giving some background on the Portal project, the interesting FPS/Puzzler that Valve has planned to go out with Half-Life 2: Episode 2. The article interviews the team behind the technology, and gives some insight on what it must be like to have the best senior year of college ever: "Along with the other members of the Portal team, we were students at DigiPen Institute of Technology located in Redmond, WA, next to the Nintendo of America campus. During our senior year, the seven of us created a game called Narbacular Drop, which was an early test of our ideas about portal-based gameplay. Every year, DigiPen puts on an expo for graduating seniors to show their game projects to prospective employers. A couple of Valve people attended, and they asked us to come to the Valve offices and show it to Gabe Newell. Gabe watched our demo and basically hired us on the spot. It was kind of shocking. We stood around in the parking lot afterwards gibbering to ourselves for about 20 minutes."

Built with the Doom 3 engine and touting numerous innovations on the First Person Shooter genre, Prey is a study in contradictions. While it delivers on many interesting twists and environmental elements, the low difficulty and hackneyed character design drains some of the novelty from the experience. Despite frustratingly similar corridors and brain-dead enemies, the quality of the innovation somehow combines with the touchstones of retro-gaming to create that ephemeral quality: fun. Much better than Doom 3, and with the new-car smell that Quake 4 was lacking, Prey is a fully functional refit of the corridor-shooter genre. Read on for my impressions of Human Head's latest.

Valve's got a new game in the works, and it's quite the mind-bender. Portal is a puzzle/FPS hybrid that will utilize holes in space to do the impossible. From the Ars Technica post: "That video makes my brain hurt in all the right ways. The set up and voice-over are both hilarious, and at first it seemed rudimentary to me. Then everything goes crazy and you start to realize just how much you can do with this technology. I'm looking forward to seeing fan-made videos hit the 'Net with all the insane stunts and tricks you can pull off. This seems to be one of those games that you'll have as much fun playing with the game as you do simply playing through it." This is a title definitely worth checking out for yourself.

Wowzer writes "Valve's Gabe Newell revealed at EA's annual summer press event that Half-Life 2 will be coming to the Xbox 360 and PS3. It will include all extra content released on the PC and a new puzzle/fps game mode where you blast Prey-like portals into floors and walls. If that wasn't enough, Team Fortress 2 showed up in cartoon-style. From the article: 'The console versions will include: Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2: Episode One, Half-Life 2: Episode Two, Half-Life 2: Portal, and Team Fortress 2. The latter and possibly both will also be included in Half-Life 2: Episode Two on the PC.' Release TBD, but it's in 2006 alongside the PC's Half-Life 2: Episode Two."

All this week, 1up has been running an extended feature on Call of Duty 3. Despite the sometimes tired WWII genre, the CoD series has managed to keep things fairly fresh in their continued exploration of the FPS' greatest war. Articles include details on the making of the game, a look back at past installments in the series, and a discussion with Creative Director Richard Farrelly on the jump to next-gen consoles.

OpenFrag was founded in May 2003 and aims to create an open source first person shooter with commercial grade quality. All participants are volunteers and use some of their spare time to help in the development process. The project was recently featured last month at the Finnish game exhibition XPlay 2006. Some of the project's textures have also been featured in the news at BlenderNation, it looks as if there is a promising future for these developers.

cyclomedia writes "Late on 22nd June 1996 Quake was uploaded to cdrom.com's archives in the form of 7 1.44MB floppy disk images. Though it wasn't until the 23rd that everyone realised (or at least, that's my excuse for being a day late with the news submission). Cue much aggravation on the newsgroups as eager downloaders experienced glorious 2 FPS gameplay."

Jack Lancer writes "Gameworld Network (which is either a network of gameworlds or a gameworld of networks) has posted an epic collection of streaming E3 videos which clearly depicts each and every playable Wii game and how exactly one has to swing, wave, shake, point, wiggle and/or jostle the Wiimote in order to play." And once again this poses the question — is this the future of gaming UI? Sure seems like a great idea for a FPS.

WeAz writes "GameSpot has news that 3D Realms has no plans on rushing Duke Nukem Forever. Despite the $500,000 bounty that Take-Two Interactive was found to be offering for the game after a filing with the SEC last week, George Broussard, President of 3D Realms, has given his official response: 'We're certainly not motivated by that amount of money, after all this time, and getting the game right is what matters. I would never ship a game early (even a couple of months), for 500k.'"

wjamesau writes "How do you create a game in Second Life that earns you thousands of dollars and scores you development deals with outside publishers? One SL user did just that last year with a casual game called Tringo (sort of multiplayer Tetris with gambling). The game became so popular in Second Life that he sold the rights for a Web version, a GBA port from Crave, and coming up, a TV game show. While there's dozens of other games in Second Life, from FPS to RTS to a mini-MMORPG, none of them have come close to Tringo's success. Kotaku is running an article I've written, based on three years helping Linden Lab organize and run the annual Second Life game developer contest: a how-to guide for creating the next Tringo-big hit."