Some pictures have shown up on a message board by a poster named 'Tom Morello' that purportedly show some of the weapons and HUD from Bungie's upcoming Halo Reach. The poster allegedly took the pictures at Microsoft headquarters. Follow the link to see the pictures and make up your own mind as to their validity

It seems as if Walmart is giving everyone a preview of holiday shopping deals. One day and one day only, in-store shopping specials which start at 8:00 am on Saturday November 7. Grab a 46" Panasonic Plasma HDTV for $788 or a Sony Blu-ray for $148 or even better a Xbox 360 Arcade Console with a $100 gift card. With that deal you can grab COD Modern Warfare 2 for free!! As usual, quantities are limited so good luck.

Editor note: There is no definitive shape, size or style of a game review, and this is proof. This piece from Derrick Hopkins not only reviews the game, but it also challenges it by comparing it to a very real, once-in-a-lifetime experience. Enjoy.

By Derrick Hopkins
Editor, deadpixellive.com/special contributor to Tech-Out

The Nurburgring is a 13-mile-long race track in located Nurburg, Germany. Nicknamed the "Green Hell", it was built in 1927, has 72 corners, constant elevation changes and is considered one of the most dangerous race tracks ever constructed. And for about $15, anyone can drive on it.

A lot of games have included the Nurburgring on their list of locales to simulate. The latest is "Forza Motorsport 3," which claims to be the most "realistic racing experience ever." "Forza 3" gives Xbox 360 owners the option of taking on the Nurburgring and dozens of other tracks in a collection of SUVs, exotic sportscars and purpose-built racers.

My brother and I had flown to Germany for the express purpose of driving on the legendary track. And we'd do it in a rented Mercedes C230 sedan.

Cool guns have become as much a part of gaming's fabric as health packs and life meters. Whether it's a Barrett .50 caliber sniper rifle or a machine gun that fires heat-seeking bullets, many gamers have their favorite brands of fire-spitting, death-spewing hardware. For some, it's even an obsession.

That's where the true power of Gearbox's Borderlands lies. It's the "Guns & Ammo" of gaming, appealing to our inner firearms enthusiast. Not only does it stroke our urge to search for, collect and play with new toys that go bang, it gives us the ultimate playground. Sure there's a plot and a story, but who cares when you have a high-powered rifle that shoots electric rounds?

This morning, Disney announced that they were creating Disney Epic Mickey, an action platformer for the Wii that's looking to give the vaunted mouse some new life. Mickey travels to a place called the Cartoon Wasteland -- a place for Disney creations that have either retired or faded into obscurity. The caretaker of the wasteland is Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, who was Walt Disney's first star ... until Mickey came along. Naturally, this leads to issues when Mickey stumbles into the wasteland and ruins the land's sense of balance. Now, it's up to Mickey to provide damage control.

Here's a snippet about gameplay from Disney:

Players use the Wii Remote to wield magical paint and thinner to re-shape the world around them. Paint's creativity and thinner's damaging effect give the player robust tools and empowers them to make choices about how they move through the world. Each player's decisions to use paint, thinner or both dynamically changes the world with consequences that affect the environment, interactions with other characters, and even Mickey's appearance and abilities.

The painting concept immediately brings me right to Okami, an outstanding game from Capcom where you had the ability to "paint" items into the scenery and watch them spring to life -- for instance, if you painted a sun at night, you would immediately make it daytime.

Disney sent over some screens and art for the game, so you can see it after the jump. The game's slated to drop in the fall of 2010.

I love Sony's new ads featuring Kevin Butler, the VP that wears as many hats as Sony needs him to and with plenty of style to boot.

On that note, and in view of Red's review of the amazing Uncharted 2 (I've played it,too), here's a little example of what I'm talking about. Enjoy!

And don't forget, it's also fun for the whole family!

At least according to "customers" on Amazon.com in the UK.

Today's information saturated world has turned the internet into an open bulletin board allowing anyone with a chip on their shoulder to post their unflattering review of the Transformers in less than three words, accessible to anyone with a browser. But it's not all off the cuff. Some of that anger is also backed by a number of legitimate concerns.

Amazon is no stranger to this kind of internet vengeance. Last year, Turbotax maker, Intuit, raised the price on its flagship product by $15 and started charging users $9.95 for each additional return made on it. Predictably, this made many upset for a variety of well thought out reasons spanning more than three words. People who quickly downrated Turbotax's listing on Amazon to one star.

The good news is that Intuit actually listened and reversed the $9.95 charge.

In another example, self-help author, Cooper Lawrence, had stated on Fox News that Mass Effect had "full digital nudity and sex." which was extremely misleading, sensationalist "SE"XBOX" news header not helping. Mass Effect does have one sex scene, but it happens late in the game and is the kind implied on prime-time television, even for a game rated "M" for Mature (titles like Max Payne 2 or even the original Duke Nukem were a lot more explicit compared to Mass Effect). Of course, to anyone that believes that games are just evil, this is great ammunition...even if it is absolutely wrong.

Gamers quickly protested by hitting her self-help book on Amazon with one-star ratings, indirectly attacking her in the process and questioning the veracity of her own work in their comments. Soon, enough of these were submitted to drive it into the ratings basement until Amazon deleted them, but it did elicit a retraction of sorts from Lawrence a week later.

And now with Infinity Ward's controversial decision to build IW.Net and remove dedicated server support from their latest game, Modern Warfare 2, moving it closer in design to what console players are used to, PC players furious over the changes haven't wasted time in making their anger felt. A petition already passing 100K 'signatures' is still earning more, Infinity Ward's response to the furor has only thrown more gas on the fire by simply looking at the comments, and angry gamers have already found its listing on Amazon's UK storefront.

Interestingly enough, Amazon's storefront over here has wisely opted not to open up the ratings for the any version of Modern Warfare 2 yet. It's probably hard not to wonder why.

UPDATE 9.25.09: It looks like Amazon.UK have removed the PC title's star rating (although the screenshot above shows what it had appeared as), likely because the reviews rating it aren't from people that have actually played the game. The Xbox 360 version, though, has a five star rating according to one poster. The petition is still going strong, though, now surpassing 150K signatures. Not bad for one week.