Eidos has been hard at work for one of its upcoming titles, Age of Conan, and the company (along with Funcom) has just launched www.ageofconan.com, where you can see the new trailers of the game, along with screenshots, artwork and more. The website is an entertaining and informative experience for both new and existing fans. "As an online gaming company we are always focused on improving our online presence, and the launch of the new Age of Conan website is a move we wanted to do prior to launch," said Morten Larssen, VP of Sales & Marketing in Funcom. "With the new website we have tried to capture the very essence of what the Conan brand is all about, and we hope both fans and newcomers will enjoy it." Age of Conan is consistently mentioned as one of the most anticipated PC games in development. It has received more than twenty magazine covers and more than fifteen major awards, including numerous "Best MMO of E3" awards and the official "Best Online Game of Show" award at the GC convention 2007. Age of Conan is a key title in Microsoft's Games for Windows line-up, as well as a showcase title for nVidia. Below you can see a bloody video trailer (warning! - some scenes are very "graphic").



latest trailer

 You're probably familiar with the Smallville TV show and what it is all about: a younger version of Clark Kent (aka Superman) and also a younger Lex Luthor, who used to be one of the good friends of Clark. The actor playing as Lex, Michael Rosenbaum, will be the voice of Hayden Tenno, a vicious killer who awakens to find he has been infected with a mysterious entity that grants him super-powers in the upcoming video game Dark Sector. Peter Andrew, vice president of product development, D3PA, said: "We are thrilled to work with Mr. Rosenbaum on Dark Sector"(...) "His experience in portraying tormented characters on-screen translates incredibly well to the tortured character of Hayden Tenno in Dark Sector, a true anti-hero who makes no excuses for his actions. The combination of his voice talent and the compelling storyline of Dark Sector will offer a truly immersive experience for players."

Electronic Arts has announced that the Dead Space video game will also have a PC version, scheduled to be released this fall. Glen Schofield, the Executive Producer has mentioned that one of the projects, the downloadable content for all formats, is in the works, but that the plans are much more extended than that: "I would definitely like to make future Dead Space games,” said Schofield. "I’d love for this to become a well established franchise; we’ve created a huge and rich back story and universe, so other games could easily be made." So gamers should be quite interested since this would be one of the scariest titles that ha ever been created for the PC. It will feature a lot of elements similar to the ones in Half-Life 2, with the action set mostly on the single-player story, with puzzles which need to be solved by using a gravity gun, like in the game Portal.

Later edit: an interesting device apricorn drivewire

 

It is not the first time when an on-line game is involved (but not responsible) into a real-life conflict that lead to a serious beating which resulted in the death of a 33 year old gamer. Two rival clans from the Lineage II MMO met in real life after one of the member’s avatars was killed in an online battle. The meeting ended up in a serious conflict and resulted in the fatal beating of a 33 year old man and the arrest of a college student in the Russian town of Ufa. The unsub (suspect) claims that he is part of the Coo-clocks clan, where the members are mostly students. The family of Albert, the dead gamer, is still being threatened by the game-clan. Albert's sister says: "I think they have confused the game and reality. And after we buried him on December 31, they continued to threaten us". The killer member still shows signs of serious problems of understanding where the barrier between reality and fiction lies: "Beat everything that moves, and everything that doesn’t move - move and beat! – this is one of the rules of the Coo-clocks clan." Apparently the unsub has problems in connecting with reality, violent out-bursts being something very common in his behaviour. It is also interesting how the Russian press sees the issue: "Internet experts say these cases shouldn’t be lumped together just because some people can’t handle the situation.(...) Not many talk about the benefits of internet games for disabled people who don’t have a chance to communicate with others like themselves or able-bodied people. Nobody mentions the benefits the internet can offer in education," says Aleksandr Kuzmenko of a computer game magazine. It's a good thing that people realize who is to be blamed here, however, the family of Albert hasn't got the same grasp over the whole situation.

A lot of gamers out there would like to indentify themselves at one point with their favourite video game characters. But imagine you could see those video game characters as real as it gets, in our world. Would they survive? It depends on what type of characters they are, but since they would be used (too much) to the rules of the video game world where they live, like in the video below, it's highly unlikely to survive in our "tough" world. As a gamer, you must be familiar with the Mario game and also the excellent movie that was based on it. Have a look below to see another interpretation of the Mario character and his adventures: