Today, I have some great news for you! With the occasion of its one year anniversary, Lord of the Rings Online allows you to take advantage of a limited offer - $199 for life! Even more, this is not all of it, since there's also some new content to be enjoyed...

To celebrate its first year of existence, LotRO will have a bunch of new content available these days, including new lands, factions, classes, and features.

Book 13: Doom of the Last King, the last update to the game, introduces the ocean, the snowy region of Forochel, a new monster player class called the Defiler, and a new faction called the Lossoth which players can earn favors with. There's also a new hobby system, which allows players to go fishing.

The party will last for an entire month, and during this period, creatures will drop rare items when defeated, and this items can be traded in for various prizes.

Since $199 isn't such a small price for playing a game, even for life, you could also choose to pay the $14.99 monthly fee, or take advantage of the limited offer allowing players which subscribe for 90 days or more to have a reduced monthly fee of $9.99, for as long as they maintain that payment.

Oh! I guess I forgot to give you the link, in case you're new to this title, so here you have it - Lord of the Rings Online official site. Enjoy!

Did you get your hands on Hellgate: London so far? If you hesitated because this game had its share of problems, now you should be (almost) out of excuses, because the patch 1.2 has been finally revealed officially, after a previous release to an exclusive bunch, as a Beta. Anyway, before moving on and reading about this patch, I suggest you to go and read PlayerzBlog's review of Hellgate: London first.

To install the patch, simply click the "Update Available" button in the game. Now that you know this, let's see what changes brings version 1.2 of the Hellgate: London action RPG, shall we?

Since the list is extremely long, I will give you only the general changes here,leaving the rest of them for you to explore, if you are really interested.

"Based on the number and depth of balance changes to skills in this update, certain characters will be provided a "respec token" that allows them to reassign their skill points. This token is automatically placed in the character's inventory and can be used at any time.

• The timer and quest requirement have been removed from the mini-game.
• Fixed a bug where chat entry became visible in the Character Select screen after logging in and then logging out of the game.
• Fixed a crash bug associated with exiting out of the Character Creation menu.
• Players now only need to make a Normal Mode character to be able to make an Elite Mode character.
• Fixed a bug which caused audio and sound effects to sometimes stop playing.
• Adjusted difficulty of the Nightmare endgame. Decreased the ramp of the damage penalty that players face against monsters higher than their level.
• Fields from different sources can now stack. Please note that the graphics from new fields still override those of previous fields.
• Players must now wait 5 seconds before they can re-enter a Hellrift.
• Fixed a bug which caused weapons to disappear when swapping weapon sets in the middle of performing certain skills.
• Fixed a bug which caused the /played command to display the incorrect amount of time played.
• If a player dies during (or just before) a cut-scene begins playing or the game begins loading, the re-spawn options menu will come up after the cut-scene or loading screen is completed.
• Vendor inventories in Nightmare difficulty should now be stocked with Nightmare-level items.
• The Shock effect now deals damage immediately when it's applied.
• Several character and monster animations have been improved.
• Fixed known Blueprint exploits.
• Fixed a bug which sometimes caused files to require unnecessary patching.
• Fixed a bug which caused the mini-game to become stuck if the player zoned to town or quit the game immediately after completing a round of the mini-game."

The very looooong list with all the changes can be found on the official Hellgate: London site, so feel free to check it out!

Romance of the Three Kingdoms XI, also known as Sangokushi 11, is the 11th game in KOEI's famous Romance of the Three Kingdoms series. Released for PC on March 17, 2006 in Japan, and later Traditional Chinese version on July 27 in Taiwan, the game had no PC version for English speakers so far, but that's subject to a change in the near future...

<-250x250 Square - left->KOEI just announced that the historical simulation Romance of the Three Kingdoms XI is going to become available for Windows-based PCs in English throughout North America on the 29th of July, 2008!

"Following KOEI's successful launch of Warriors Orochi for Windows-based PC earlier this year, the response to bringing more of KOEI's popular franchises to the platform has been overwhelming. For PC releases, the Romance of the Three Kingdoms series has always been at the top of our fans' wish lists. We are looking forward to bringing Romance of the Three Kingdoms XI to Windows-based PC this summer," said Amos Ip, Senior Vice President at KOEI Corporation.

The action is set during the end of China's Han Dynasty and the 2nd and 3rd centuries A.D., RTK XI is the most captivating game of the series, blending classical Chinese ink-paintings with debates and duels rendered in realtime 3D animations.

I am sure there's a lot to discover while playing this game, but there's still a bit of a wait ahead. Well, at least we know that the SRP is $19.99, so you won't have to break the bank to buy RTK XI!

Anyone here remembering Earthworm Jim? Well, probably some of you weren't even born when the first game in the series was released, so let's look back for a while... Back in 1994, Earthworm Jim was developed and released by Shiny Entertainment for the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis, and later ported to SNES, Game Boy, Game Gear, Sega Master System, and even the Game Boy Advance, a few years later. In the meantime, Earthworm Jim was taken over by Interplay, who just announced that a new Earthworm Jim game is under development.

The game, called Earthworm Jim 4, is being developed together with character creator Douglas TenNapel, who will also serve as creative consultant for the project, and help launch an animated series and feature film.

After the dark period at the end of the 1990s, Interplay closed its gates in 2004, but came back in 2007, after selling its Fallout intellectual property to Bethesda Software, and now they have just announced the first move that's intended to put them back in the game.

Unfortunately, all we know for now is "Earthworm Jim 4," and nothing else. Not a single word about platform, release date, expected system requirements, maybe even some multiplayer modes...so we must keep our eyes on Interplay, and you must keep your eyes on us - or simply subscribe to our news by email, it's just as easy as that!

I am not crazy about games based on movies, because in most cases, they are completely messed up, but this time, I will leave my opinion aside, especially since the Harry Potter franchise sells a lot of products, and EA Games already released pretty successful games based on it. Now, EA and Warner Bros. announced the launch of the Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince video game later this year, at the same time with the new Harry Potter movie...

"We believe that the Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince video game represents a milestone in the movie tie-in genre. Building on the technological advancements of previous games in the series and with a particular focus on the unique control system of Nintendo's Wii, the team here is working closely with the filmmakers to create an immersive interactive experience that captures the story, the action, the excitement and, above all, the fun of the film," says Harvey Elliott, Head of EA Bright Light studio in the UK, where the Harry Potter franchise has its home.

Humm...we should live and see it! Doesn't really sound like my kind of thing, but since Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is scheduled for release on the Wii, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PlayStation 2, PSP, Nintendo DS, Windows PC, Macintosh and mobile devices, I guess virtually everyone should be able to play it, no matter their favorite gaming device...as long as they are crazy about such games, of course!