It's the Fourth of July here in the US, the holiday where we celebrate our independence from our (now) good friend the British.  Expect posting to be light today as most of the staff will be celebrating the holiday by grilling meat, drinking beverages, and setting off fireworks. 

Sarcastic Gamer (via CVG) has a contact that has revealed that Microsoft will be unveiling a new Halo game at E3 this year.  Take this with a Scorpion sized grain of salt but it does make a bit of sense in that it would give Microsoft their tent pole game for next year's holiday season and it fits their pattern of altering Gears of Wars games with Halo games.  I guess we'll find out in a little under two weeks when Microsoft kicks off their press conference.

Elliot Bonnie
Looks like I will celebrating July 4th weekend with the epic Metal Gear Solid 4. Love it or hate it... you have to respect Hideo Kojima's vision and execution.

Sean Colleli
The review titles are catching up to me.  I finally installed Kung Fu Panda for PC, which is a fun little action game for kids, although it doesn't play well on a keyboard and even on my impressive rig it runs a little slow.  I finally got the good achievements for the Medic and Pyro in Team Fortress 2, so I'll be putting the backburner and blutsauger through their paces this weekend. I'm also reviewing Space Invaders Extreme and Arkanoid DS.  Space Invaders is great, a fun, addictive and substantial update of the arcade classic, while Arkanoid is, well...Arkanoid.  Not much you can do to modernize that game.

Charles Husemann
This weekend will likely be spent recuperating from my annual Fourth of July party but I'm going to try and wrap up Battlefield:Bad Company and Civilization Revolutions this weekend.  Of course Team Fortress 2 will be on the docket as the race for Pyro achievements finally seems to be leveling off.  I might also spend some time ironing out the E3 schedule as I'm compressing three days of meetings into two days.

Randy Kalista
Strolling the Barnes & Noble, I spotted a strikingly familiar logo on a pocket-sized book in the Sci-Fi/Fantasy section:  The spiky-maned wolf symbol from CD Projekt's RPG stunner, The Witcher.  Titled The Last Wish, it introduces Geralt de Rivia, the witcher in question, and is more of an episodic detective novel -- of all things -- with monster mashing and winks toward folk stories like Grimm's fairy tales.  It's even better than you think.  I've reinstalled The Witcher along with the v1.3 patch ... and I'll polish off the Polish novel during the copious load screens.  And if this rumor is to be believed (I personally could not find corroborating evidence), then The Witcher is hunting down PS3 programmers.

Dan Keener
If the rain holds off, I will be attending the annual 4th of July "Chuckfest" and Fireworks show (Parking is Free!) featuring Rock Band and an actual use for the Nintendo Wii.  I also will continue my quest up in Alaska's Bearing Sea to fill my tanks with my crab quota before the season ends next week.  Like John, I may have to pull out some classic Diablo II and get back into one of the greatest games of all time...

Cyril Lachel
This weekend I plan on finalizing all of my E3 plans.  Yes, I know I should have done this weeks (if not months) ago, but there's that rush of adrenaline that you get when you wait until the very last second.  Actually, that's a lie, but it's a lot less embarrassing than the truth.  When I'm not stressing over hotels, flights, conferences, interviews, and the like, I will be playing games for fun (as opposed to playing for review).  I'm still completely addicted to Space Invaders Extreme, there's just something about that game that keeps me coming back for more.  I also intend to go through both Maximo: Ghosts to Glory and Maximo vs. Army of Zin, both for a Ghosts 'N Goblins article I'm working on.  And if I still have time, I think I might try and beat The Bourne Conspiracy on the hardest difficulty.  Let's hope I can get to all that."

Matt Mirkovich
I am taking a gaming vow of silence until Chrono Trigger is released on the DS in the US... Okay they announced it. Uh... more Persona, Summon Night Twin Age on the DS. Surprisingly Arkanoid and Space Invaders Extreme are a lot of fun. It's mostly old gen stuff for me this week since there is nothing for me to be excited about except Soul Calibur 4.

Nathan Murray
I've started back at school taking summer classes so my weekend will consist of Biology labs and the Shadow Run RPG. I'm paitently waiting for my copy of DBZ Burst Limit and right now I'm also very interested in Soul Caliber 4.

John Yan
It just seems I can't get away from nabbing intelligence, setting people on fire, and mowing down people with my trusty Sasha. With the recent announcement of Diablo III I'm half tempted to load up the second one and hunt down the big red demon again. I also found my original Fallout CD so I might traverse the wastelands to save my vault.

Did you just hear the collective fanboy squee?  Square Enix has announced that they are porting Chrono Trigger to the DS.  Chrono Trigger is one of the Super Nintendo's most beloved classics, and is arguably considered to be Square's finest RPG.  Fans have been clamoring for a portable version for years, and they'll finally get one this holiday, with a new touch screen interface and a brand new dungeon.  Expect an official press release shortly, but until then, you can check Kotaku's coverage.

Activision announced today that Guitar Hero: On Tour and its unique peripheral has established a new North American sales record by a "factor of eight." In the first seven days the game was on the market, over 300,000 copies were sold. So to break it down, the previous best selling Activision title on the DS only moved around 40K copies in its first week. Maybe Activision needs to get more involved with the DS... [READ MORE]

Rockstar announced today that the release of Midnight Club: Los Angeles has been pushed back about a month from September 9th to October 7th. In addition, the PSP take on the game (Midnight Club: LA Remix) will also be releasing on the same day. Delays are common and usually inevitable in the game publishing industry, so moving it back one week isn't such a big deal. I'm sure our crack reporting team that will be covering E3 will be able to ask the question and find out if there is anything sinister behind the delay. [READ MORE]

Got a laptop with a NVIDIA chip? You might be taking it in for a repair as the company has announced that there seems to be a problem with some older chips that shipped in "significant quantities". An update to turn the fan on sooner has been issued to help reduce the heat that causes the problem. Still, NVIDIA is taking a $150-$200 million charge in the second quarter to cover repair costs. Unfortunatly, they didn't say which products were having problems so we don't know currently which laptop GPUs are affected. With the economy the way it is and some delayed products, NVIDIA is also lowering their second quarter revenue forecast. Not a good day to be NVIDIA.

Well it looks like the firmware update for the PlayStation 3 that adds Tropies, in-game XMB and other features has been pulled so you can't update to it now. A host of problems have come up on the forums. I haven't had any problems yet but I've only been playing MLB 08 The Show (Hey I'm in AAA now!) and the in-game XMB has worked fine and I haven't had any lockups. Let's hope Sony fixes this one mighty quick. Now i'm scared to even turn the machine on.

EDIT [Dan] - Sony has confirmed the update was pulled and claims it has received a limited number of calls on the issue.

Demos, Patches

• AtomicGamer mirrored the demo to the Live for Speed S2 Alpha racing game.  (Plus its patch Y to Z.)
• A new v1.009 hotfix is out for World in Conflict:  US, UK, French, German Cut Edition, German, Italian, Russian, and Polish.
• Tactical shooter, Rainbow Six Vegas 2, hits the v1.03 Global and German patch jackpot.
• A full listing for all language versions of the new Warcraft 3: Frozen Throne v1.22a patch is available at AtomicGamer.

Videos

• BAJA: Edge of Control Vehicle Damage (WMV HD, WMV), Developer Diary Video #3 (WMV HD, WMV)
• Dead Space Developer Diary #4 (WMV)
• Legendary Weapons (WMV)
• City Life 2008 Edition Trailer #4
• Ninjatown Trailer #4 (QT)
• TrackMania Nations Forever World Record (HD)
• Dreamlords the Reawakening Gameplay

Screenshots

• DT Carnage (PS2)
• Ironclads: American Civil War (PC)
• Trauma Center: Under the Knife 2 (DS)
• Mushroom Men: Rise of the Fungi (DS)
• Sho Online (PC) [new pet system]
• Lineage II Chaotic Throne: Gracia (PC)
• Elf Online (PC) [forbidden city]
• MindHabits (PC, Mac)
• Aeronauts (PC)

Articles

• Defunct Games does some ball busting and fact checking with Electronic Gaming Monthly in Defunct's "They Said What?!?" feature: "EGM Aug. '06 -- Dragon Quest IX on Wii?"
• Making their way around the cubicles almost daily, Cryptic has some Q&A with Champions Online designer, Brian Gilmore.
• Digit-Life "touches upon a single problem" when viewing the AMD Phenom X4 In Real-Life Applications.
• Hellboy: The Science of Evil garners an equally evil D+ over at AtomicGamer.

Thanks to Defunct Games, Cryptic Studios, AtomicGamer, and Digit-Life for today's news roundup.

I have to admit that I'm a bit captivated by Pure, Disney's new off-road racing game simply because the graphics look incredible. The game looks amazing but I am starting to wonder if the game is all looks and no gameplay.  Well this new trailer shows off the trick system in the game so that does assuage some of my fears a bit.  Hopefully I'll get some hands on time with the game later this month at E3.
BTW, -2 cool points for using Wolf Mother's "Woman" in the trailer.

Here's the new trailer for Paradox's City Life Edition 2008 which illustrates the decisions you'll have to make in the game like building bridges, redeveloping run down areas, and rocking out to a killer soundtrack.  Looks like a nice time killer for those who need a Sim City fix.

The folks at GameTrailers TV have managed to secure another exclusive as they will have the first look at Midway's Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe on the show this weekend.  Not only will they have the first look at the game but they will be unveiling two new villains from the game.  Once again you'll want to set your DVR's as the show isn't on until 1AM EST.  [READ MORE]

It was such a light week from the ESRB that we are going with a news post instead of a full-fledged article. A grand total of 10 titles were rated, including TNA iMPACT! Wrestling for the 360 and PS3 and Galaga LEGIONS (XBLA?) for the 360. Otherwise, we saw just a handful of titles on the PC, DS and Wii. Check them out: