We have several weeks left before we finally get our hands on Konami Digital Entertainment's Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, and the home stretch of the waiting period is killing us. To keep you preoccupied, we decided to feature some of the key characters of the game on a weekly basis to freshen our memories on their roles in the series. This week, we've got the creator of Metal Gear REX and nerdy sidekick extraordinaire Hal "Otacon" Emmerich.

Fans of Electronic Arts and Pandemic Studios' Mercenaries 2: World in Flames (Xbox 360, Playstation 2, Playstation 3, and PC) rejoice! The game has finally been dated for launch. In addition, the developers have also released a new trailer of the upcoming video game. To find out more and see the video, head on over to the full article.

EA Montreal General Manager Alain Tascan revealed today that they are having problems with some groups of people who are rather affected by the subject matter Army of Two (Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3) tackles. He said, however, that they are not trying to make any political statements. The rest of the story after the jump!

Pandemic Studios and BioWare are currently on the hotseat after Electronic Arts' shocking acquisition of both development studios, and we're fortunate enough that they're giving answers to fans who aren't very happy. In an interview, Pandemic made it pretty clear that the partnership with EA won't hinder the developers from being creative.

According to Pandemic chief production officer Greg Borrud, nothing is changing in how Pandemic develops games or what games they choose to develop. He also adds that the acquisition will not break the company's "core pillars of building big brands", regular game events, or their ability to attract the best talent in the industry.

Co-founder and president Josh Resnick continued, saying that EA probably wanted to buy them because of Pandemic's "ability to be creative... and to really stretch our limits and innovative, and to really focus on creating blockbuster original IPs." He stressed out that new and original IPs will be coming without restrictions from EA.

What Pandemic can learn from the partnership, as Resnick sees it, is how to have a powerful marketing organization and make franchises go forward by spinning out many games. Pandemic CEO Andrew Goldman and Borrud agree that passing technology around is another positive draw to the US$ 860 million deal with a publishing giant like EA.

Aside from having access to support from Electronic Arts, Pandemic big wigs say nothing much will be changed in the development pipeline. Hopefully, we won't be seeing annual Destroy All Humans! titles or titles like Mercenaries 09 any time soon.

When Koei promised us one heck of a hack n' slash party and being able to mow through hundreds (even thousands) of enemies in the form of Bladestorm: The Hundred Years War, we just know that we're in for a big surprise. Now that the Bladestorm demo is out on PlayStation Network, we're going to find out what it is we can expect from the game, compared to our own expectations.

The game starts off in the tavern where mercenaries get their contracts from. Surprisingly, the demo already lets players customize their characters...and it's not just merely choosing from an available stock characters, but one can choose to play as a male or female character, and even choose facial features. Of course, players can name their in-game avatar.

The tavern also offers other services and options, like accessing character inventory and status, listening to gossip, and even buy equipment. There's only one piece of equipment available for purchase in the demo, however. It should be noted that in the demo, the System menu is blacked out, preventing players from using the save function in the demo.

Now, customizing characters in a demo and getting access to all of the game's features save the System menu is nothing short of awesome, but why is it that we keep on grinning and laughing amongst ourselves instead of dropping our jaws in awe? Simply put, it's the voice acting. The barkeep's badly-mimicked accent just sounds too strange to be French, and is nothing short of chuckle-worthy. Even the voice of our custom female player has a cute accent as well. But its bearable, though a bit distracting.

In the game, players can choose to play either for the English or the French, then choose any of the available job contracts offered by either army. Contracts generally require taking over a certain stronghold, or base. Once fulfilled, you will be rewarded with equipment and a certain amount of Fame.

Read the rest of the review in the Full Article link!

What does it take to construct a game like Naughty Dogs' Uncharted: Drake's Fortune? What goes on in the developers' minds as they put the game through build after build? If you find yourself asking these questions, you might want to look at this video which gives players a little look at the creation of the game and the different considerations developers had to keep in mind.

The video features the head honchos of the game with the co-presidents of Naughty Dog Evan Wells and Christophe Balestra sharing their observations about the game. The game's director Amy Henning as well as Lead Programmer Travis McIntosh also shared their insight on Uncharted: Drake's Fortune in the video making it a much see for fans of the game.

Uncharted: Drake's Fortune is slated to be released by November 20 in the U.S.

Here are a few more chunks of info about Fallout 3 (PC, PS3, Xbox 360), the much-awaited next-gen iteration of the highly popular and much-loved Fallout franchise. The following details were revealed at Bethesda's recent Fallout 3 press event and come to us courtesy of Joystiq:

• In the Fallout 3 universe, Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel and Fallout: Tactics never happened.
• Fallout 3 will feature a day/night cycle as well as changing weather.
• There will be no multiplayer mode. No demo is currently planned.
• Players can collect 21 collectible bobbleheads throughout the game
• Fallout 3 will feature 20 licensed songs from the '40s. Players can listen to these songs through radio stations accessible via the PIPBoy as well as radios that players can come across in the game world.
• Travel between locations can be done via subway tunnels. There will be no drivable vehicles.
• Bethesda is still considering the addition of downloadable content as well as player-created mods.
• The game will have 9 to 12 different endings.
• Almost all NPCs in the game will be killable. There will also be children, but Bethesda has yet to decide if they will also be killable as in the previous Fallout games.
• Players will once again be able to hire mercenaries for extra firepower. As in Fallout, players will not have a lot of direct control over them.
  

Joystiq also mentioned that the Fallout 3 demo showcased in the press event included a loading screen that showed a metric of "corpses eaten." When asked, executive producer Todd Howard declined to reveal anything about it. "We're not talking about that stuff," said Howard.

While the possibility of it being a joke is there, we still wonder what a corpse's rad levels are.

Fallout 3 is currently slated for release in Fall 2008.

Prepare to step back into the boots of a hardened Mercenary in this world premiere trailer video of Pandemic's Mercenaries 2: World in Flames. We give you a sneak peek on what to expect with this highly-anticipated sequel to the game that gave you the license to blow up anything - literally anything - in your path.

The trailer itself is in true Mercenaries style: loud, brash, and has loads of explosions. The next-gen bells and whistles are obvious here, with smoother, better-looking character models and even more impressive explosions. We get to see the three members of the team, each doing what they do best: Steal vehicles in mid-flight, blow stuff up, throwing grenades into tank holds, blowing MORE stuff up, performing hazardous stunts with expensive-looking cars...did we mention making a lot of stuff go boom?

The Mercenaries are back, and it's time to get paid. Watch out for its multiplatform release (PC, PS2, PS3, Xbox 360) sometime this year - we know we'll be!

More info about the upcoming video game that's got everyone talking, Sony's The Agency for the PlayStation 3, in this developer interview video. We give you the skinny on what you should know about the PS3 exclusive, and no, this article isn't going to self-destruct after five seconds.

First off, The Agency is pretty much a first-person/third-person shooter MMO with heavy espionage overtones. Certainly not a genre we've heard before, what with espionage giants like Splinter Cell and Metal Gear Solid having already exposed the public to such gameplay. But instead on focusing on espionage, The Agency focuses on giving players the unique over-the-top experience agents like the legendary James Bond would consider a part of his everyday routine. They call this "Agency Moments", instances which trigger depending how you're doing in a mission or in the overall scheme of things.

We also learn that there's two agencies you can choose to align yourself with in the beginning of the game, namely the Unite Agency and the Paragon Agency. The Unite Agency is where the spy business is at - the usual tuxedo-wearing, martini-sipping, Walther PP7-shooting agent types will be found here, and if you're into the Bond business, you'll feel well at home with Unite. If you'd rather be the sharp knife rather than the blunt instrument, however, Paragon would be the place for you - rough-and-tumble, hardened ex-military mercenaries only need apply to its ranks.

Another thing we found out is the game's "You are what you wear" system - that being, your character's abilities relate directly to what sort of gear you're sporting. If you want to be someone who takes the enemy head-on, you'll be wearing something akin to modern-day battle armor. If you'd rather be the stealthy, unseen one in the bunch, you'll have to step into something less comfortable and more body-hugging (a sneaking suit, perhaps?).

On paper, everything sounds really good, but we really can't tell if it'll look as sweet in execution (the video itself doesn't have any videogame footage to boast). Still, it's good to know what they're planning for this rather unique video game, and it sounds pretty interesting thus far. Keep it locked right here for any and all updates concerning The Agency!

Speaking with Eurogamer, Scott Warner revealed that once Pandemic Studios were done with Mercenaries 2 anything is possible - even a handheld version of the game. Here's Scott Warner's words:

At the moment we're only concentrating on the versions of the game we've announced, but I'd love for us to work on a handheld version of Mercs! Anything's possible!

What has Pandemic Studios currently busy at the moment is Mercenaries 2: World in Flames, which is being custom built for next-gen consoles, the PC, and the PS2. After they're done with that game, we just might see more Mercenaries for the PSP or the DS.

Mercenaries 2 is set to feature fully destructible environments and is set to look a lot like Venezuela.

This combination of destruction and Venezuela is something that the aforementioned country doesn't seem to like - heck they even asked Bono to do something about it.

Anyhow, all the mercenary focus on next-gen platforms (and Venezuela) should end by Winter, as Mercenaries 2: World in Flames game is set to be released by then. Will we see a PlayStation Portable version of Mercenaries? We certainly hope.