Grand Theft Auto is a notorious game franchise, made even more popular by its problems in various countries, were some games of the series were pulled back from stores because the content, various themes and the gameplay were considered "too much". The 9th game will be Grand Theft Auto IV, also known as GTA IV or GTA 4, but its version label is this, because GTA 4 is the first game in the 4th generation of the franchise. Scheduled for wordlwide release on the 29th of April, GTA 4 will be the first game to use the new RAGE game engine, and today I just got my hands on some interesting details about its multiplayer mode...

Unfortunately, we're not talking about official information, but it's better than nothing, so here we go - GTA 4 will have no less than 15(!!) multiplayer game modes, supporting up to 16 players at once. Each game's rules will be set by its host - obviously - but the interesting part is that you will be able to change your character's appeareance as you wish, including race, hair, clothing, and so on.

At last, here's the game mode list - Hangman's Noose, Car Jack City, Bomb da Base and Bomb da Base II, Mafia Work, Team Mafia Work, Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Turf War, Cops N Crooks, Race, GTA Race, Deal Breaker, Free Mode, and, at last, an unknown mode.

Since Rockstar didn't comment anything on this story yet, I guess best bet for you is to subscribe to our news by email so you can be up to date, don't you think?

Do you miss Hulk? If you didn't check the comics, at least I guess you put your hands on The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction. If you also missed that game, released by Radical Entertainment and Vivendi Games back in 2005, I am sure you must have seen at least one movie featuring Hulk, the green giant pictured below, part time Dr. Robert Bruce Banner, and part time superhero...

Well, here's the news - Sega and Marvel announced to have a new Hulk game under development, and this one is scheduled to appear at the same time as the new Hulk movie, this summer.

For now, we know that this game will feature unlimited destruction, allowing you to throw anything you can grab into buildings, but you can also demolish with your bare hands. More than that, the dynamic open world of the game allows you to climb buildings too, so battles will be fough on both horizontal and vertical fronts.

Unfortunately, this game is covered by shadows for now, but since the PS3, Wii, DS, PS2, Xbox 360 and PC platforms should have it available by the end of June, I guess we'll have to wait and see...

Unreal Tournament 3's graphics engine, Unreal Engine 3.0, is a very solid product, and was used in a lot of games so far, with even more to come, but Epic Games looks ahead, and they are always having some plans related to Unreal Engine 4. Unfortunately, PC gamers may not like them, but that's life...

Tim Sweeney, Epic Games CEO, said that "The Unreal engine is really tied to a console cycle. We will continue to improve Unreal Engine 3 and add significant new features through the end of this console cycle. Version 4 will exclusively target the next console generation, Microsoft's successor for the Xbox 360, Sony's successor for the Playstation 3 - and if Nintendo ships a machine with similar hardware specs, then that also. PCs will follow after that."

Hummm...so are they leaving PCs behind? Well, not quite now, but it's a pity to hear such things. After all, Unreal Engine 3.0 is a great engine, as games like Gears of War prove, and I would hate to be forced to wait until they move to PCs again...or even worse, I may have to buy a console!

Developed by the same studio that created Knights of Honor, namely Black Sea Studios, WorldShift is a Sci-Fi RTS game for the PC platform that was surrounded by mistery so far. Release date was unknown, while apart from a few screenshots, no information about the gameplay, storyline, or units in the game was available. Now, the time to start the beta stage has finally come, but...



...the closed beta stage was opened on the 12th of February, for a limited number of 5,000 gamers. Now, they moved to the open beta phase, but unfortunately this is only available to FilePlanet members. To get started, visit this page and follow the instructions, I am sure you can't go wrong!

<-120x240 Vertical Banner - left->At last, I guess the system requirements would be more interesting than other details about the game, but since I wasn't able to find them on the official page, here you have the main game features as described there:
- Fast and furious multiplayer
- Thousands of items and powerful relics to collect
- Use items and relics to build your own tactics
- The best cooperative, player-vs-environment gameplay ever made in RTS game
- Random maps for infinite exploration
- Unique blend of post apocalyptic setting, hi-tech and primitive
- Epic, dangerous missions with great rewards
- 3 playable races

Hummm..."player-vs-environment"...do we get to chop trees in this game? I don't think so, but that would really be funny!

A lot of voices heard in the last few years started to say that PC gaming is slowly getting near its end, and that consoles are the way of the future. Maybe in the Western world this may become true pretty soon, but in the emerging countries, where most buyers are on a tight budget, the PC will remain the favorite gaming device for a pretty long time. Fortunately, there are still gaming companies that support PC gaming...

...and one of them is Splash Damage, the development team behind Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, who consider game development for the PC much easier than on consoles. For example, Paul Wedgwood, lead designer on Quake Wars and Splash Damage owner, said "We've always lead on PC because you can prototype a game really quickly compared to the consoles. If you want to balance really well you do it on PC first, and then it's set up for console. If you do it the other direction it can go really badly."At last, it should be noted that Wedgwood considers PCs better for some game genres than consoles - "Personally I think that RTS, MMO and shooters, mostly, are better on PC. That's something that's very clear to us. How people come to adopt [PC gaming] is the tricky part. They probably get a PC so they can use Facebook or YouTube and then end up doing some PC gaming. The online part of PC gaming is absolutely in growth, not decline. The challenge for PC developers is to figure out why the things that work, work. There's no reason why developers should abandon these PC models and think the PC doesn't have a future, these kinds of games work."

Great, so buying a console can go way down my planned purchases list... what do you think about it?