Activision has released the first gameplay trailer of Modern Warfare 3, which, surprise surprise, looks a lot like the previous games, only bigger. This time, as the trailers show, the war is taken to the streets of New York, Germany and England, in what looks like giant set piece battles which Call of Duty is known for.

Gears of War isn’t just a video game, by now it’s a franchise with books, comic books, animated series, a movie coming soon, and now: a board game. Board game makers Fantasy Flight Games have announced the official Gears of War board game, which supports one to four players, playing against the AI controlled Locust.

The Gears of War 3 board game features 7 levels, and over 30 plastic figures, 200 cards, and 35 Locust AI cards. The board game will available this Summer and will cost a rather steep $80. We dunno if that’s worth it for a board game, considering you can get Gears of War 3 brand new, and probably Gears of War 1 and 2 used for $80. But if you’re into board games and you’re a Gears of War fan, go for it

The PlayStation 3 featured the best looking racing game after it launched: MotorStorm, the first party Sony title offered some of the biggest thrills and stunning visuals in a racing game. The third entry into the series, MotorStorm Apocalypse, is set during the apocalypse where the racing tracks are constantly affected by the environment — everything from earthquakes to tornadoes will do their job at making the gameplay more hectic and tense.

MotorStorm Apocalypse is set in a large city which has been evacuated due to an earthquake. The empty city now makes for a grand racing track for off-road racers. The story follows a group of racers who venture inside the city to compete in tournaments. The story is quite thin, but then again, this is a racing game and the story isn’t meant to do anything but guide you from race to race, which the story in MotorStorm Apocalypse does well (and does with a nice graphic novel style).

Gameplay wise, if you’re familiar with the hectic MotorStorm gameplay, you’ll be pleased to know that the Apocalypse follows in the footsteps of its predecessors, and even pushes it further with a new mode called Festival, which pits everyone into the same race: motorcycles, ATVs, cars, buggies, trucks, and Monster Trucks, all competing alongside each other. The tracks are exciting in one sense: the tracks are dynamic, which means there’s always something going on, maybe an earthquake changes the course or blocks a road, a skyscraper topples over, or a plane crashes. This forces you to stay on your toes at all times and pay attention, which adds even more tension to the thrilling gameplay. Multiplayer wise, there’s up to four player spit screen more, or online which supports up to 16 players, which also offers persistence and unlocks. Online multiplayer, especially when you find a great match with 16 players, is one of the best multiplayer racers you can play.

Visually, the game looks great, but not that much better than the previous MotorStorm offerings, but this time, it also supports 3D. The track design is varied and offers a lot of replay value. There are a few issues with the game though, most noticeably, the car physics. Some times, a much smaller vehicle can block or cause a larger vehicle to spin, and sometimes a small bump on the road can cause you to lose control, while large boulders from an earthquake don’t affect you at all. This kind of inconsistency with the physics can be frustrating at times. Also, loading times tend to go on for a while. Overall, MotorStorm Apocalypse will surely please fans of the series, especially if you own a 3D TV.

The Good:
Great gameplay
Interesting race tracks
Awesome online multiplayer
Great visuals

The Bad:
Not much gameplay innovation
Physics are frustrating at times
Long loading times

Overall score: 8/10

According to new rumors, IGN, which recently became a separate company from News Corp., is looking to sell the PC games download service Direct2Drive to GameFly. According to sources, IGN has been looking to sell Direct2Drive for a while, and it appears they’ve finally found a buyer.

GameFly offers game rentals, much like Netflix offers movies. Despite having a limited amount of subscribers — around 450,000 — GameFly has stuck around for a while and has found a niche in the market. Last month, IGN split from News Corp. and will merge with UGO, creating the biggest game site in the world.

As for Direct2Drive, they’ve been in stiff competition with Steam for years and have a good selection in games. Having D2D under GameFly might benefit both companies, as D2D also has some game rental offers as well.

Despite a few leaks last week regarding Modern Warfare 3, Activision is still on track with their regular schedule. They’ve just announced that Modern Warfare 3 will be officially unveiled on May 23, during the 4th game in the Western Conference NBA Finals between the Dallas Mavericks and the Oklahoma City Thunder.

However, as Activision points out on their Modern Warfare 3 Facebook page, the “unveiling” is set to be yet another teaser, which leads us to believe it might just be showing one of the teasers we’ve already seen.

We dunno about you, but teasing a game can quickly become boring and downright annoying. Just reveal the game already, Activision. If not, then stay silent until you reveal it at E3 or something.

Epic games has revealed their Epic Edition of Gears of War 3, as well as the Limited Edition. The Limited Edition will retail for $80, and will feature a life sized Octus Service Medal, a cloth Cog flag, and in-game unlockable Adam Fenix multiplayer character.

The Gears of War 3 Epic Edition is whole other beast, as it will retail for a whopping $150 bucks, but in return, includes a massive figurine of Marcus Fenix, weighting in at an impressive 3.7 lbs! On top of that the Epic Edition includes all of the stuff found in the Limited Edition, plus a 96 page book covering all aspects of Gears of War, and custom multiplayer skins for the five starter weapons in the game: Lancer, Retro Lancer, Hammerburst, Sawed-off Shotgun, and Gnasher Shotgun.

Both versions will be available when the game launches on September 20, albeit the Epic Edition is said to be in very limited edition quantities. So pre-order it, if you absolutely must have it (and if that $150 is burning a hole in your pocket).

It’s not hard to find a decent online multiplayer shooter, whatever you style is. There’s Bad Company 2 for the realistic FPS, Call of Duty for those wanting a faster pace, Team Fortress 2 for those who want a cartoony styled fun, and of course, classics like Counter-Strike are always popular. Brink manages to incorporate elements from all of those games, while adding a few of its new ideas. In theory, this should work very well. But theory is different from practice, and Brink is a solid proof of that.

Brink is developed by Splash Damage, which recently did Quake Wars, so they’re certainly competent when it comes to multiplayer shooters. Brink is set in the future, where the remaining humans are stuffed in a city block called “The Ark”, and you fight as either The Security Forces or the Rebels. There isn’t much of a story here, but there really isn’t a need, since it’s a multiplayer shooter. The campaign can be completed with humans or bots, but don’t expect much help from the AI. Multiplayer wise, there are 8 maps, and each map has a different objective. The maps are very varied and stylized, and we loved the new “parkour” style gameplay where you can climb and slide all over the map. The only thing we found limiting is the player count: only 16 players online are supported, which doesn’t feel like enough in these days when 32 or 24 players are the norm.

You can customize your character quite a lot by unlocking new items, completing certain challenges etc. The customization part is great, and it’s something a lot of shooters are gravitating towards these days (even failed ones like APB). You not only unlock looks, but skills and weapons as well. There are 4 classes, Soldier, Medic, Operative and Engineer, each with their job to do in a particular mission. One of the exciting new aspects is that you can chose a specific body type, large, medium or skinny, each with their own advantages and disadvantages — the large body isn’t as fast as nimble as the skinny one, but can take more damage, while the medium is just… medium — and kinda boring.

Visually, Brink separates itself from other FPS shooters by having a somewhat comic style, somewhere in between the “realistic look” and the “Team Fortress 2 look”, and the game’s cell shaded looks add to the overall style and aesthetics, which add a lot of originality to the game. However, the quality of the graphics isn’t that high, textures are somewhat low res, effects are uninspiring etc. Overall, the graphics, including the sounds effects, kinda feel dated. Worse, we’ve experience a lot of connection and networking issues with the game, something the developer promised to patch soon.

Overall, Brink promised to deliver lots of new features to the multiplayer FPS scene, but overall, those new features don’t make a big impact. Worse, the nuts and bolts of the gameplay feel saggy and behind most contemporary shooters. We’d wait about buying Brink until it’s gotten a few patches. And a few price slashes.

The Good:
Great character customization
“Parkour”-style movements add an interesting level to the gameplay
Interesting visual style/aesthetics

The Bad:
Lots of lag
Gameplay still feels dated
Graphics look dated
Limited amount of players online
Only 8 maps
Bad AI

Overall score: 4/10

Everyone loves Steam’s offers: what’s not to love about paying a meager $5 for an awesome game that cost $50 just a few months ago? Steam has launched a new recurring daily offer, which each day will discount one game. Steam is kicking off the deal with Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising, which is 75% off and now sells for just $5.

Steam has been running a variety of new offers lately, from their regular weekend deals, to mid-week deals (where they offer a game on Wednesday), to random deals throughout the week. Now with recurring daily deals, we have a reason to visit Steam every day. And Steam has even more reasons for getting our money, and they know it — Operation Flashpoint Dragon Rising is currently downloading on my Steam now. Which probably means I’ll be wasting a lot of time this week. Darn you, Steam, darn you!

With so many different FPS titles on the market it’s quite hard for developers to differentiate their offerings in a market largely dominated by the likes of Call of Duty. Splash Damage chose to take a somewhat unique approach with Brink which essentially combines Call of Duty and Mirror’s Edge allowing players to gun down baddies while transversing the environment in a parkour-esque fashion.

Seeing how the critic community is a tough one it’s not really a surprise that Brink has received some mixed reviews. However, Splash Damage is doing what they can to keep gamers happy and make Brink a more pleasant experience. In fact, just today they announced that they have updated the Xbox 360 version of the game to limit its online matchmaking to 8-on-8 matches in an attempt to curb and hopefully eliminate lag.

Not only that, but the developer has also let us know that they are hard at working polishing some DLC to be made available at some point next month. Unfortunately, we don’t know the specifics of what’s going to be included in said DLC pack other than maps it has been said that there will be additional content. What we do know for sure is that Splash Damage will be cutting us all a break offering the DLC pack free of charge. Now all we need is an official release date for this DLC pack and some more details as to what it includes and we’ll be golden.

Stay tuned!

Each console on the market has their fair share of exclusive titles which you’re undoubtedly well aware of. Sony’s PS3, in particular, has several exclusives including Uncharted, Killzone, LittleBigPlanet and, of course, God of War.

The God of War franchise itself has been around for quite some time making its debut back in 2005 on the PlayStation 2 as simply God of War showing gamers that hack ‘n’ slash titles are incredibly fun and satisfying. Since then things have progressed quite nicely with the franchise seeing many different titles spanning both home and portable consoles. Currently, the most up to date release for the PS3 is God of War 3 which hit store shelves in March of last year. However, on the portable side of things PSP owners have been enjoying the more updated God of War: Ghost of Sparta which was only released in November of 2010.

Unfortunately, if you’re looking to get down on the game or Chains of Olympus (the series’ first PSP title) without a PSP you’re basically out of luck. However, come this July that may all change according to recent reports. These reports suggest that Sony is gearing up to launch a God of War Portable Collection on the PlayStation Network that will allow PS3 owners to check out the content they may have missed on the big screen.

Of course until something more is said on this we’re going to put it in the rumor bin but once more news is made available we’ll be sure to push it your way.