While the name Peter Jackson was once associated with the long- buried Halo movie project, a new project involving the renowned Hollywood director has once again surfaced. Microsoft is currently assembling a team willing to "help develop a new experience in the Halo universe". Find out more about this in our full article after the jump.

Take an age-old plot line of "post-apocalyptic survival" and time warp it into the 23rd century, and you get something of the Third Reich in whole new level. While Planet Sera has that sort of thing going on, FPS-style, Mass Effect is serving it up through the RPG genre. It's going to be a holocaust of organic lifeforms as an alien race of machines are about to come back after 50,000 years in order to harvest some living organisms.

Yes. It's an RPG. That's how BioWare puts it. But maybe some of you would rather have it as action-RPG, what with all the aliens to blow up, machines to handle, and hi-tech weapons to carry. Regardless, you can check it out for yourself soon enough.

By today, December 8, the developers are going to upload their X06 demo trailer on their website and right on Xbox Live! They're not sure what time it's going to be there, but they assume around mid-morning (in Alberta, Canada). Maybe by the time you're reading this, it's already available for download, so better keep tabs on your Xbox and behold the glory of an alien invasion.

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*UPDATE!* The video's out! If you haven't been able to catch it in Xbox Live yet, or if you're trying to save some valuable memory space, then why not just click below to check the full vid itself. It's Mass Effect in all it's 5:22 minutes glory, including a commentary from Project Director Casey Hudson himself!

In case you've forgotten, let us remind you of the statement uttered by Id Software CEO Todd Hollenshead a few weeks ago regarding more of their classic titles appearing on XBLA: "Making the surprise announcement at X06 for DOOM worked out great, so I'll be tight lipped about anything specific for now." As promising as it sounded back then, we learned today that we'll all be getting more than what we actually wished for.

Graphic designer Kevin Cloud declared recently that their company, Id, and Wisconsin-based developer Raven Software, are currently working on a full-blown Castle Wolfenstein title. In case you guys are not aware (but you should be), Wolfenstein popularized the FPS genre for the PC. So in short, pay some homage rookies! Anyway, moving on...

"What we're doing with Wolfenstein is creating this one, large empire that is seamlessly loaded to the player as he explores his world," disclosed Cloud. Developer John Carmack, on the hand, said that "The Xbox 360 is the first console that I've ever worked with, that actually has development tools that are better for games than what we've got for the PC." With such words coming from the programmer extraordinaire, we can't help but feel giddy and excited.

No details are available for the next-gen Wolfenstein...for now. Despite that, X360 gamers can definitely sleep sound tonight and dream of castles and first person shooters as Cloud leaves us with this parting statement: "Wolfenstein is really a way of redefining the way first person games are experienced."

Speed is good, if only because it keeps a driver awake on those long drives. For gamers like us, it's not the actual real-life speed we're interested in, but as the feeling of speed that we get from playing a video game.

Even in this new footage that's been put up, we can't help but feel impressed by this unfinished build of Forza Motorsport 2. Even at this early stage, you've got to love the detail on those cars. Even when they hit something, the rendering remains rather faithful to an actual car collision. The frame rate might not be up to snuff just yet, but we're pretty sure it's going to get better when they release an actual new video. We just have to wonder who was driving the car, because he's not exactly that skilled.

Now, according to the NeoGAF forums, this is from X06, but since you're not supposed to be filming this sort of thing, you can understand why it's taken a while for someone to put it online. True, it's shaky, and you'll probably need a relatively fast computer to view the whole video without any stuttering or pausing from your computer, but so long as they have a convertible that moves crazy fast, we can probably wait a little longer for Microsoft to give us an awesome preview video.

Download: [Forza Motorsport 2 -X06 Gameplay]
Pre-order: [Forza Motorsport 2]

It seems that Korean fans of the Xbox 360 got to see a lot of cool new stuff about Microsoft's next-gen console. Among other things, Microsoft just announced plans of releasing a 100GB version of the Xbox 360 hard-disk sometime in March 2007. You can also see the funky receiver, which will be a counterpart for the wireless controller, so that you can use it on your Windows PC.

Besides, there's also the larger capacity Memory Unit at 256MB, and a couple of cool-looking headsets for Xbox Live.

Although no prices have been announced by Microsoft, it's good to see them releasing upgrades to their console, because a bigger hard-disk was sorely needed. What's great to see is that Microsoft is getting two of their most successful projects together, Windows and Xbox 360. More interoperability between the two can only mean good for everyone. I can expect their Live service to be really mammoth and totally encompassing the gaming space in a few years. Let's see how Microsoft take it from here. Meanwhile, stay tuned for the latest!

Check out more images, courtesy of Game inside, after the jump!

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UPDATE: Ankalagon dropped us an e-mail saying that Xbox Germany's Microsoft Senior Product Manager Boris Schneider-Johne says that there has not been an announcement for100GB hard discs. The words "100GB" were apparently just painted by someone on the slideshow images, thus making the 100GB image a fake (come to think of it, the last image - the one with the words 250 MB - may also be a fake). So for now, I guess it'd be safer to file this story under "Rumors". If you have polished on your German, check out Boris Schneider-Johne statement here.

Once DOOM was surprisingly added to the roster of Xbox Live Arcade titles as X06, it has gotten many people wondering if more of id Software's gaming library would be coming to the arcade anytime soon. The FiringSquad actually went out of their way to find out and contacted id's CEO Todd Hollenshead to find out for themselves and 360 gamers everywhere whether or not if more of their games will be ported to the system. This is what he has to say:

"We're looking at bringing some of the other games to XLA, but a lot is going to depend on the response to DOOM. From what MS tells us, its been fantastic so far, which bodes well for other id "classics" to be released there. But there's nothing concrete. Making the surprise announcement at X06 for DOOM worked out great, so I'll be tight lipped about anything specific for now :)"

So if you're hoping for more old school first person shooters such as Wolfenstein 3D or Quake to play online with friends over Xbox Live, it looks like action will speak louder than words so everybody should start buying DOOM on the Marketplace for 800 Microsoft Points - that's if you haven't already.

When you want to know everything there is to know about a game as controversial and exciting as Epic Game's Gears of War, you'd have to go straight to  the source. The guys of 1up recently got a hold of the game's lead designer, Cliffy B., over at the recently concluded X06.

This high definition video is a documentary of sort of the interview itself. Topics that were covered in this interview ranged from the game's color scheme, how the characters' voice actors were picked, details on the co-op spilt mode (which by the way was explained rather humorously explicit), COG tags (that adds to a human element to the game) to chainsaw and grenades.

Download the video if you want more information on the multiplayer modes, downloadable content and his explanation on his very convincing explanation about his f**k jump blog entry.

Download: [Gears of War: Cliffy B. Interview@X06]

Pre-order: [Gears of War]

We've got something for all you folks who're tired of all those CG, pre-made, pre-packaged (people use the prefix 'pre' too much, don't they?) game trailers that offer little detail about the gameplay. We found this X06 interview of Lead Designer Jens Andersson, and in it he was willing to talk a little more about their console version of the Top Cow comic, The Darkness.

Helpful little Darklings (that we already know about) instant summon black holes that suck in everybody in the room, as well as creepy "shadow" tentacles you can use to throw cars. Even if we don't get actual footage (although I think there are people playing the thing behind Andersson) of those things, the little bits they do show are enough to get you, at the very least, curious about the game.

A nice thematic point of the game that Andersson revealed is that in this game, you, instead of the things around you, serve as the source of the horror element. I'm not quite sure if that will translate well across the screen; we'll have to wait for the game or at the very least, more game footage to come out before we can be sure of that. It's a bit comforting that Paul Jenkins is working with Starbreeze Studios, so it's safe to say that we'll get something loyal to the original.

Check out the vid below.

Let's start with the issue that most of you have probably been wondering about: why Too Human, the action-adventure game based on the future of technology, didn't show up at the recently held X06.

According to Denis Dyack, a member of the Silicon Knight team, the reason why they didn't bring Too Human to the X06 was that they simply weren't ready to show the game. Denis also says that their main goal in showing the game was to give the people a real feel of what it will be like when it comes out, and that includes story, audio, gameplay, artwork, and technology.

At the time of X06, they weren't ready to show the game in all its goodness so they decided to hold back. But Denis also assures us that everything's going well with the game's development and that there will be a preview of the game soon. Alright, now that we got that out of the way, let's move on to the gameplay.

Control Scheme: the right analog stick is used to perform your basic melee combat attacks, allowing you to instantly attack in any direction and flow attacks effortlessly between targets.
Different patterns and combinations of the conventional buttons and triggers will give you access to ranged gun combat, juggle attacks, air combat, finishing moves, and tons of advanced combos and moves.

Other than the control scheme, Denis doesn't provide much other detailed info on the action elements of the game, which has only led to further speculation about the game's content and gameplay. But Silicon Knights says that the reason why they haven't revealed much info is because they believe that the game should be played and experienced for it to be fully understood.

But rest assured that the game will live up to both the action AND adventure genre when this game comes out -- an intense action based combat game with deep RPG gameplay. Your character's play style will be defined by the choices you make and the skills and abilities you gain. As Baldur, the main hero, embarks on the task of saving humanity from a horde of robots gone haywire, these skills will definitely help out in slaying beasts with sword attacks, hammer smashes, shootouts, and tons more.

Thus, the weapons you choose and how you combine them to issue kickass attacks will change the experience and combat possibilities. Add to that the co-op multiplayer mode that the game will feature, you can only imagine the endless combat possibilities you'll be getting yourself into. We mentioned in an earlier article that the game's release date has been pushed back, and according to IGN, the game is now scheduled for release April next year. We'll keep you posted for more info.

The past week has been pretty good for Gears of War publicity-wise. Among them good newsies are the possibility of Fonix VoiceIn voice recognition technology, the confirmation of a co-op game mode and the coalition with blockbuster film The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning in the first ever video game and motion picture dual preview. With a new day comes another big update for Gears of War - an X06 'chainsaw' trailer fresh out of X06 coming your way.

As you may have guessed from the title, this trailer is very gory and is strictly for those over the age of 18, much-like the Texas Chainsaw Massacre film it is due to be previewed with. There isn't any video trickery here, this trailer is pure gameplay and something that you can expect when the game is released on November 12 this year.

Again, we will re-integrate the violence included in the game. If you are in any way squeamish then we advise that you do not watch the trailer. The graphics of this game make it seem very realistic and therefore you might not want to watch it, but if you can handle a bit of blood and gore then it's more than likely that you'll enjoy this title. Happy viewing!

Preorder: [Gears of War]