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Following a dinner with some media this evening, Epic’s Mark Rein stood up from his table and announced that he had to get going … he was going to go home and post on the Epic forums about anUnreal Tournament IIIdemo. Midway PR and other Epic employees shot him the hairy eyeball, as if to say “Are we supposed to be talking about that yet?”. But Mark is unstoppable, andhe wasn’t kidding: Just wanted to give you a heads’ up that we’re getting pretty close to releasing the Unreal Tournament 3 Beta Demo for Windows....

Dragon Age: Originsexpansion “Awakening” is a throwback to the way PC studios used to do downloadable content, appropriate given BioWare’s history. It’s not bite-sized. Adding new characters, a new world, new loot, new quests, new enemies, new skills, and even a different way to shape the hero, users are in for a full experience. I talked to the game’s online producer Fernando Melo via the Internet’s magicks to peel back Awakening’s wrapper and see what it had to offer....

If you’re going to buyNBA 2K11, you might as well get some Xbox 360 Avatar and PlayStation Home crap while you’re at it, right? 2K has announced that it’s partnered with GameStop to offer pre-order customers some digital goodies for their virtual personas. Xbox 360 pre-orders will receiver a code to download the official red Chicago Bulls road jersey for their Avatars. PlayStation 3 folks will get the white Chicago Bulls home jersey....

Coming right behindAtlus’ official announcement of a US releasefor their first HD game,Catherine, is our preview of the Japanese version, which was just released a few weeks ago. So, what have you heard? That it’s not quite what you’d expect from Atlus? That it’s a puzzle game? That it’s horny? That it’s insanely difficult? I can tell youall of that is true. What’s also likely true is that just about everyone reading this preview wantsCatherine(the game, not the girl) for themselves....

Edge is reporting that social gaming beast Zynga has acquired East Coast studio Area/Code, renaming it Zynga New York. Now, news like this — social game company buys small dev to probably make other social games our readers don’t care about — generally doesn’t get reported here. But I’m making an exception, and the reason is Area/Code’sDrop7. Seriously, have you played this game? It’s like some sort of number/puzzle crack....

TheAliens vs. Predatordemo was a lot of fun, in my opinion, but it had problems, mostly in the technical department. Although the PC version’s matchmaking was fixed ages ago, Rebellion has only just gotten around to fixing the PS3 demo, a day before the game itself is set for release. Better late than never, I suppose. The demo was also criticized for only providing an all-on-all deathmatch mode, a mode that, let’s face it, not many fans are going to be interested in....

What’s more manly? The ripped and bulging form of Chad Concelmo (seen above)? Or the over the top manliness of theContraseries? The correct answer: neither. Just to give you an example of how manly Chad is, he woke up this morning in a pile of women, spent from a night of finger banging (the women, not him). He then proceeded to brush his teeth with a jackhammer while humming AC/DC’sThunderstruck, commonly known to be one of the most manly songs in the world sung before breakfast....

Did September fly by for anyone else? It was here and then it was frickin’ gone. Despite the fact that the month flew by a plethora of games came out in almost every category imaginable. I think we’re warming up for that holiday season rolling in. It’s quite possible the biggest game of the year landed this month inHalo: Reachand meanwhileEnslaved: Odyssey to the Westshined for those avoiding the franchise. In fact I’d wager that September has some of the highest scores in the most varied amount of genres as any month....

It’s time for yet another contest from the ever-generous Destructoid and its friends. This time, we’ve clubbed together with Codemasters to give awayfive Xbox 360 faceplatesproudly displaying artwork from the upcoming action RPG titleRise of the Argonauts. If you want to win one of these faceplates (pictured below,) then all you have to do is perform a very simple task indeed. As you may know, I am a world renowned digital artist, with such famous works asToo Humanings,Crisis Whore(possibly NFSW, but it’sjust a piece of Materia) andSir Winston Q....

Atlus has done somegreat stuffin the past, andRock of Ageslooks just as good. This trailer had me rolling (har har). If you are watching this and wondering what exactly is going on (like I was), you can find another trailer on theirofficial sitethat provides more information. For those of you uninterested in visiting theRock of Agessite, you control the giant boulder from the Greek myth of Sisyphus. Only your task is not to roll down a hill forever, but to destroy everything over the course of centuries....

In an interview with Official PlayStation Magazine, Rockstar’s Creative VP, Dan Houser, was asked if the lack of an included hard drive in Xbox 360 Core systems and the 360’s use of the DVD format was causing any limitations in the development ofGrand Theft Auto IV. Dan’s reply was a short but sweet, “yep.” He goes on to say: “To be honest with you we haven’t solved all those riddles yet....

Ars Technicasays that they’ve heard from an inside source that Microsoft will start making Core and Premium systems with HDMI ports after the exisiting stock has sold through. According to my source, Microsoft wants to cut through all their existing inventory of hardware. They will then quietly “soft launch” a new version of the Core and Premium hardware in late August or September that will include an HDMI port. It’s also expected that this new hardware will feature the 65nm process for the CPU and quieter DVD drives....

The latest news coming out ofIGNregardingRygaron the Wii leaves me a little sad inside. Back in May,we reportedthat Tecmo made their first announcement at the “Nite Out” press event that the game was going to be a Wii exclusive. Well now it looks like the game that had quite a few of us were pumped up about is actually going to be ported from the PlayStation 2 — with a couple of updates added....