Valve is one of the most influence names in the gaming community with several of their hardest hitting games sure to go down in history. Of course they have the highly popular Half-Life and Counter-Strike series but they also have the somewhat newer Portal series. If you’re a fan of this series you’ll know that the company has recently released the second addition appropriately dubbed Portal 2 which includes things like co-op play and many new puzzles to portal your way through.

However, once beating both modes of the game there isn’t much you can do besides try to beat your own personal high score. Luckily, Valve has just remedied that today as well as they have just pushed out a level creator for the game. That’s right, you can now create your own puzzling levels for Portal 2 and all it takes it a simple download within the Tools sections of your Steam account.

There has been a ton of fuss regarding Sony circulating the web largely due to the fact that after their PlayStation Network was taken down by hackers they have yet to put it back up. Luckily, word hit the street that they would be hoping to launch the PSN but May 31st but we’ve heard some contrasting reports that said these were just estimates and not a solid date. Another thing is that there have been notes that hackers have yet again targeted the PSN which may cause Sony to further delay the service’s relaunch.

Luckily, it seems that these reports had no basis as Sony has come forth today to let us know that there have be no such attacks and that these reports were nothing more than incorrect rumors.

Activision Blizzard recently released their quarterly earnings, and the company revealed that after the latest World of Warcraft expansion, Cataclysm, subscriber count dropped by 5%, settling in at 11.4 million paying subscribers. WoW hit 12 million subscribers with the launch of Cataclysm (read our WoW Cataclysm review here).

Activision Blizzard explained that the lower subscriber count is due to players completing the levels and content in Cataclysm quicker than they did with previous WoW expansions. The Cataclysm expansion has sold over 5 million copies to date. One can imagine that some of those subscribers also left for competing MMOs. Or perhaps they just got a life instead.

Danish developer IO Interactive has revealed the latest entry in their Hitman series, called Hitman: Absolution, the company revealed in a new trailer, which you can find above. The game will be built using IO Interactive’s brand new, proprietary engine called Glacier 2 The trailer include a number sequence “110706″, adding a few periods gets us a full reveal date: 11.07.06. In other words, at E3 next month. However, Hitman Absolution will be showcased behind closed doors to a selected few only.

It’s been weeks since Sony shut down the PlayStation Network due to hackers infiltrating it and stealing user data (including credit card data). Sony has slowly reinstated some of the services, and has announced that they expect to full restart PSN and all its features on May 31. PSN has been down since April 20, and has prevented PlayStation 3 owners from playing online ever since.

Over the past few weeks, Sony has been working on restructuring their network, adding firewalls, and improving overall security of the system. With the lack of online capabilities gone from PlayStation 3, it spells a difficult launch for one game: Brink, the online shooter which will be released for PlayStation 3 this week.

Epic producer Rod Fergusson has stated in a recent interview that he believes Gears of War has the best cast in all of video games, which is of course a lofty statement, considering all the great casts in video games, from Half Life 2 to Grand Theft Auto 4.

Nevertheless, Fergusson talks about a moment in Gears of War 2 where character Dom’s wife dies, and how that had an effect in the voice acting room with voice actor Carlos Ferro. Fergusson said, “It can definitely get pretty intense, when you’re trying to get those kinds of emotional scenes.”.

True, we can imagine it requires real acting from voice actors to do the tense scenes in video games, but that goes not just for Gears of War but for all video games. Although, we’ll have to admit, the voice actors doing the Locust voices in Gears of War are pretty awesome.

We’ll have to see how the cast and voice acting is in Epic’s latest game, Gears of War 3, which hits the store shelves in September.

According to new rumors, Nintendo isn’t the only console maker coming out with a new console in 2012 — the rumor suggests that Microsoft is working on a new console and has already shipped development kits to developers and publishers, most notably, EA.

The news comes after an unnamed source (and we all know how reliable those are), speaking to Develop, saying that EA has the new dev kits and that the console will be released in late 2012 — just in time to compete head on with Nintendo’s new console.

However, the source also revealed that the console most likely won’t be unveiled at E3 this year, which means if you’re looking for a new console unveiling at E3, you’ll get one from Nintendo only.

EA recently released their financial results for the 4th quarter of fiscal year 2011, and they revealed just how anticipated Battlefield 3 has already become: the game has been pre-ordered seven times more than the previous Battlefield game, Bad Company 2. EA didn’t reveal just how many pre-orders the game received, but we’re sure it’ll translate into a lot of sales — Bad Company 2 sold 7 million units to date, a number which BF3 will certainly surpass.

EA also revealed that a mobile version of Battlefield 3 is coming, but didn’t revel any details or platforms. Expect BF3 to hit the iPhone at first, much like Bad Company 2 did. Although, we’d love to see a decent shooter on the Nintendo 3DS and/or the upcoming Sony NGP.

There has been a ton of news circulating regarding the battle between hackers and Sony. First, Geohot broke security behind the console in an effort to re-enable the ability to install Linux on the console. Following this malicious users did what they could with the hack to pirate games, cheat online and cause all sorts of havoc. Next came a law suit from Sony against Geohot which forced him to never distribute the already available hacking information which angered the online group dubbed Anonymous. Finally, Anonymous hacked Sony bringing down the PlayStation Network and stealing all sorts of user info.

Most of this other than Geohot’s initial intention to bring back the ability to install Linux is incredibly bad. However, it seems that the fruits of his labor have finally paid off as it was just made known today that hackers have managed to finally bring back the OtherOS functionality. If you’re not familiar with this feature it shipped with the original PS3 and allowed consumers to install and use Linux on the console. Unfortunately Sony removed the feature due to security concerns which obviously worked against what they were trying to accomplish.

There is certainly no shortage of zombie themed games out there that allow players to gun down the undead with all sorts of different weaponry with the Left 4 Dead series being a perfect example. However, Deep Silver and Techland is looking to shake the genre up quite a bit with their forthcoming game titled Zombie Island which made headlines time and time again when a cinematic trailer was released earlier this year.

However, while Deep Silver will be the main publisher for the game the hype surrounding its release has caused them to call in back up – back up in the form of Square Enix. It was just announced today that Square Enix will be getting the rights to distribute the game around the company. Deep Silver explained this by stating that they are too small of a company to garner interest from major retailers. Seeing how Square Enix has released big games time and time again, they should have no problem with the task.

Dead Island is expected to make its debut for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC on on August 1st of this year.