Still Alive has won many awards including best end credits song and funniest song.  It was this kind of creativity that made Portal one of the best games of 2007.

You can now get the song for Rock Band for free.  Still Alive is now available on the XBOX Live Marketplace.

Portal ending credits (minor spoiler): 

Jonathan Coulton performs "Still Alive" in Rock Band from Joystiq.com on Vimeo.

Lockout is being remade for Halo 3.  It will be called Blackout and released as part of the Legendary Map Pack for Halo 3.  The map geometry is very similar to that of Lockout.  In an interview with Bungie they spoke about the new map.   Summary:

• this map is set during the night time
• in the frozen Antarctic on a UNSC weather station
• map geometry rebuilt from scratch by looks to be very similar to original
• most of the jumps from Halo 2 are there must some have been removed to prevent map control on a certain part of the map

Go to the Bungie article to look at more screenshots.

The Heroic Map Pack has been made available as downloadable content (DLC) by Bungie and are free as of today.  The Heroic Map Pack consists of three maps and weighs 487.18MB.

 
The symmetrical valley of Standoff, with its entrenched bases and fields of boulders is ideal for mid-sized objective and Slayer game types. 

The vast, labyrinthine passages of the Rat's Nest bring something completely new to the multiplayer experience: an indoor vehicle paradise. Strongly influenced by the Campaign mode, this map is ideal for big team battles. 

Foundry is the ultimate Forge map. Players can edit every single object in this voluminous industrial warehouse, placing stairways, walls, bridges, and tunnels to create an entirely new play space and build almost any kind of map imaginable.

On Saturday March 22nd the semi-official Rock Band band of THX, Insinuating Chaos, performed and finished 2nd in a Rock Band tournament hosted by GameStop at Madison Square Mall. It was terrifically entertaining and some of the most fun I’ve ever had with my clothes on.

Let's face it.  Coagulation was kind of close to being the remake of Blood Gulch.  And we know HALO 3's Valhalla wasn't quite Coagulation or Blood Gulch.

A new map is being released by Bungie for Halo 3.  It's called Avalanche it is a near-remake of Sidewinder.  "It has the same familiar U-shape, multiple ways from base-to-base, and a whole sandbox full o’ vehicles to play with."

Avalanche and the rest of the Legendary Map pack will be launched on April 15th and cost 800 marketplace points (or $10 for those counting beans at home).

In an interview Bungie map makers have described Avalanche.

• No ladders in this map (or since HALO 1 for that matter).  Thus, they had to change the interior of the bases.
• Hallways connecting bases removed because it was too easy to overtake vehicles in those tight quarters.  Bungie wants gamers out in the open sections of the map.
• Man cannons have been added to help you get around the map on foot.
• There are new attack routes.
• More vehicles with icy texture maps.

I look forward to the map and hope it brings back memories.  I expect it to be as close to Sidewinder as Coagulation was to Blood Gulch.  That will be enough for me to spend $10 for the map pack.

Strikingly during the interview, Avalanche level designer Niles Sankey said "we also needed another big vehicle map" when asked why they remade Sidewinder.

Queue Saturday Night Live's Weekend Update segment called "Really!?!".

If Bungie keeps thinking that we need bigger maps, I guess we won't be seeing Chill Out, Rat Race, Prisoner, or Hang 'Em High anytime soon.

I didn't see this posted anywhere else, so I thought I would share this info. If you could care less about achievements, have never played the original Rainbow Six: Vegas, or if you have already loaded this game onto your profile (ie. put it in your Xbox 360), then you can go ahead and ignore this thread.

Unfortunately Ubisoft has accidentally glitched one of their achievements by rewarding those that completed the previous RB6V on realistic difficulty and/or reached the rank of elite. The 'prize pack' that they provide, automatically promotes you to the rank of Specialist, along with giving you some extra XP and gear. Normally this would be a good thing, but this promotion forces the player to skip the rank of Private First Class, which turns out to be an achievement. The odd thing is, is that this glitch seems to affect ANYONE who has played the previous Rainbow Six, and not just those that have reached the 'prize pack' specifications.

In conclusion, if you have played the previous Rainbow Six: Vegas, and still want one of the easiest achievements in the game, then I would suggest you follow the instructions in the link below.

http://www.achieve360points.com/forums/showthread.php?t=75691

SneakyPete is the tricker behind this great video. It's videos like this that remind me of the beginnings of the Halo community, when H.B.O. could barely host a 25mb video, when "How Not to Be Seen" was a sensation, and just the general camaraderie and spirit of it all. This tricking video really captures the spirit of how things used to be- no egos, no "super duper in your face montages," just a bunch of people making videos about the game they loved- Halo: Combat Evolved. Any of you that played Halo 1 I recommend watching this, quite highly.

P.S.- I guarantee your jaw will drop at at least one launch and something he does with a marine.

Rainbow Six Vegas 2 hit store shelves today. If you bought the game at Best Buy you got a sticker on the outside of your case that contained a code to unlock an exclusive Best Buy gun.

The code can be used by anyone regardless of if you bought the game at Best Buy or not. This is not an XBOX Live Marketplace code.

FREE GUN: At the main menu enter the follow button commands at the Main Menu of Rainbow Six Vegas 2:

(Hold RB) Down, Down, Up, Up, X, B, X, B, Y, Up, Up, Y

FREE MAP (thanks Midnight): Got my copy from Gamestop. It contains instructions to unlock a "Comcast Optimized Map.":

From main menu select "extras"
Select "comcast gift"
Enter "COMCAST FASTER"

Who else is purchasing this game? I see that it supports up to 10 persons in online co-op.

On March 12th, I purchased, played, and subsequently beat Mass Effect's first round of downloadable content in about two hours. The ferocious alien shown above is a member of the Batarian species within Mass Effect's world, and this DLC is the first time you encounter them. The first time you see this guy bare his teeth (pictured) is pretty phenomenal. Killing him is just as much fun, even though he's just a grunt.

MTV Games' Stephen Totilo has some reservations against Mass Effect's side quests, and rightly so. Each side quest drops you on a barren world, devoid of trees and birds, prompts you to enter a facility that had the same architect as the rest of the galaxy, and kill everyone. A handful stray from this formula, but sadly, most follow those simple guidelines. Bioware points fingers at the development time of the game's technology, leaving little time to actually flesh out comprehensive side quests. They are, after all side quests. Bioware promises they'll make it up to us in Mass Effect 2, though.

So five bucks essentially bought me two hours of the best side-quest Mass Effect has to offer. Was it worth it? Rationally, I spend more money for the same amount of entertainment at the movie theater. Also rationally, Mass Effect cost me $60, and it has more than 12 side quests. Being a fan of Mass Effect's universe, I would say the purchase made sense for me. The chance to interact with a new species and get more intel added to my in-game journal helps add even more depth to an already complex universe. Oh, and the chance to save millions of people from a 16km-wide asteroid crashing into a planet was pretty fun, too. That's twice the size of the meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs, in case you didn't already have that committed to memory.

EVE Online

This MMOG is about Space, Spaceships, Politics, and Power. It's comprised of a massive single persistent PvP world that's hosted on a single 'supercomputer' managed by the game developer.

It's huge. Massively huge. Pop out the map interface and you zoom out from your current star system to a view of the entire galaxy.. thousands of stars, all with corresponding solar systems, planets, nebulas, asteroids, space stations.

Your in control of a spaceship that you can upgrade, sell, or trade in for another better class of spaceship. You gain in game currency through mining, trade, bounty hunting, pirating and/or certain odd jobs.

There's 4 races, all descended from Humans, and 4 federations that each control a segment of protected space. To travel in a solar system, warp drive is available, and to travel between star systems, you must use a stargate. The resulting star map resembles a massive internet-like network of connected star systems. Each star system has a security rating that varies from 0.0 to 1.0 based on your federation's strength in that system. 0.0 is like the wild wild west. It's persistent territory that anybody in the game can claim as their own. Venture there only if you've got the strength to sustain pirates and/or attacks from the corporations that have claimed that space previously.

Finally! Infinity Ward is pumping out four new maps, in new locations and environments, for our CODing pleasure! They are set to come out in the next couple of months. I can't wait! Check out the article from Gamespot!

I don't know about you guys, but I am ready for this. I love COD4, and I would play with or without them, but these new maps are definitely going to boost my CODing this spring or summer! The TV station environment is going to be especially different from what we have been experiencing. i'm really excited about this!

Midnight is the "Gamer Spotlight" on the "Inside XBOX" blade on your XBOX 360 console.  Way to go Midnight.

According to a presolicitation notice from the US General Services Administration, the US military is buying 300 PlayStation 3's for some kind of unspecified research.  According to the notice:

The Air Force Research Laboratory is conducting a technology assessment of certain cell
processors. The processors in the Sony PlayStation 3 are the only brand on the market that utilizes the specific cell processor characteristics needed for this program at an acceptable cost.

It looks like Uncle Sam is building a hive mind based on cell processors on the cheap! Cell processors are found in each PlayStation 3 and run at 3.2 GHz.

Flashback:  In late 2006 a machine codenamed "Roadrunner" was to be build by Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico by the Department of Energy.  Roadrunner was to be build upon the cell processors designed for the PlayStation 3.  According to Los Alamos National Laboratory, Phase 1 of the Roadrunner development is underway.

The building blocks of our childhood meet the build blocks of console shooters. This image capture comes from the April edition of EGM (which means it's an April Fool's joke).

Which begs the question:  what the heck is Bungie working on right now? We haven't heard anything in a while - not even a clue.