Boy how we did love us some Laser Tag.  We’re not talking about those stand alone Laser Tag geek centers.  Nope, we’re referring to the at home game that included a chest mounted sensor and black guns that looked like they were 20 years from the future.  The sensors allowed you to be shot up to 4 or 5 times and then you were “dead,” that is until the next battle ensued.  You could play the game any where at anytime, provided you had a direct line of site to your opponent and were willing to strip on the gear.  So how about getting back to your routes without all the plasticky parts?

The Xappr is a gun specifically designed to complement currently up to 10 iOS games on your iPhone.  It’s not clear how it works, but we’re assuming it links over either Bluetooth or the iPhone’s 30-pin port, allowing you to pull the trigger on the gun and pick off foes on your handset’s screen.  The company also plans to kick out a mini-Xappr, which we can only assume is a smaller, more portable version of its big brother. But wait, there is more!

And for those of you looking to get nostalgic, as in Laser Tag, MetalCompass, the maker of the Xappr, has plans to release the first real world multiplayer first person shooter for smartphones – ATK.  In other words, any where you go you’ll be able to play a game of would be Laser Tag with friends.  Just whip out the Xappr, mount your phone and you’ll be able to choose between three modes of plays (Death-match, Last Man Standing and Teams Mode) and a variety of weapons that include guns, rifles, grenade launchers and powerful pulse weapons.  We don’t know what ATK will look like, but clearly it will be a location based app that will allow you to virtually shoot your friends (or enemies) in the real world.

You can preorder the Xappr today for $30 plus $15 for S&H.

Many would argue that Battlefield 3, without a shred of a doubt, makes Modern Warfare 3 look like child’s play when it comes to graphics and perhaps even that sense of realism we all pine for when it comes to an FPS. And while both games are compelling in an epic battle, blood shed sort of sense, nothing compares to this supposedly fan made Battlefield 3 video.  We say “supposedly” because its production quality is just that top notch, nailing it all the way down to the in hand weapon cycling.  Anyway, why don’t you be the judge for yourself and hit the above video.

Thanks to Amazon you can grab this new Modern Warfare 3 Xbox 360 and get $50 credit along with it!

Fresh for the release of MW3 Amazon is offering you some extra credit with your order of the brand new special edition Xbox. This 360 comes with a brand new paint job which spreads to the controllers and of course has a copy of Call of duty Modern Warfare 3 included. In addition it also has downloadable avatar items and of course with $50 of credit to go with it you have plenty to either get more games or more accessories to enhance your gaming experience further. This model includes the large 320GB hard drive, more than enough to meet the gaming cravings you need. This offer won’t last long, nor will this special edition so grab it fast!

Buy this console from Amazon and you’ll not only get COD MW3, but also get a $50 credit that can be used to purchase anything off Amazon.

Battlefield 3 will arrive worldwide on October 25th.  And what better way to celebrate the release of the game’s 3rd installment, which looks be the most significant iteration since the first, by throwing around $650,000.  What are we talking about?

The day before the release of Battlefield 3, The Gadget Show, a popular UK television program, will show off what is being called the Ultimate Battlefield 3 simulator.  It uses an omni-directional treadmill, a special wireless gun and 10 infrared tracking cameras to track which direction the player is moving and pointing their weapon. Meanwhile, the data is sent to a PC connected to a projector which displays the game on the inside of a 360-degree, 4 meter high and 9 meter wide video dome.  But the immersion doesn’t stop there; 12 paintball markers fire in real time at the player, allowing them to enjoy the gunfire experience in the game.

So as the player walks, the ten cameras track the movement of the feet, along with the direction of which way the gun is pointing, and not only projects the image according to the direction they face, but accurately reflects this in the character’s in game movements.  They’ve also incorporated some Kinect Xbox camera hack, that enables gamers to jump and go prone if gun fire becomes to heavy.

The Gadget Show “Immersive Gaming Simulator Build” will premiere in the UK on Monday 24th October 2011 at 8pm on Channel 5.  Hopefully, they’ll post the show to YouTube.

The Vengeance K60 from Corsair is a hardcore FPS keyboard.  Not only is it built to last, but perform.  It retails for $109, so you’ll need to be, well, a hardcore gamer to justify its cost and features.

Built to last might actually be an understatement.  This keyboard’s chassis is made from brushed aluminum and sports laser etched keys, which means neither should ever wear out.  The WASD and #1-6 keys are textured, contoured and slightly soft to give you a one up on your opponent since you’ll always know where your fingers are thanks to their tactile response, and that they won’t slip during even the most intense of gameplay.  If you find those special keys bothersome you can switch them out for a set of standard, hard plastic set, which can be stored inside the wrist pad.  Good if you’re knocking out an email to your (virtual) girlfriend explaining why you can’t hang with her this weekend.

We’re not PC gamers, but whatever “anti-ghosting” is, it sounds freaking cool.  According to Corsair it all but guarantees that when you mash down on multiple keys, each one will input 100% of the time.  Furthermore, it can register up to 20-keys at the same time all at an ultra fast 1ms response time.

Lastly, there are the requisite media keys and a USB pass through slot, the latter allowing you to connect a mouse or other USB device, though it probably won’t charge your iPhone.

The Corsair Vengeance K60 is available now, but note that it is not Mac compatible.

Modern Warfare 3 will be arriving November 8th.  You can preorder the game, but if you’re a true die hard fan, regardless of whether or not you already own an Xbox 360, you’ll throw down $399 and preorder this limited edition Modern Warfare 3 Xbox 360.

Like the “Gears of War 3″ Xbox 360 console, this system will also include special MW3 sounds when you fire up the system and open the disc tray.  We’re sorting of hoping for gun fire and explosions, but Microsoft didn’t get specific with the sounds. UPDATE: Major Nelson has provided audio samples of the tray opening and the system powering on.  It will also include 2 custom wireless controllers and the largest Xbox 360 hard drive, boasting a total storage capacity of 320GB.

Lastly, they’ve got plans to sells an Xbox 360 “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3″ Wireless Headset that connects to the console or your smartphone using Bluetooth technology.  It too is adorned in MW3 artwork.  We dare you to wear one of these in public, that is assuming you’re willing to drop an additional $70 on top of $399.  It will drop two days after the MW3 Xbox 360 console.

Expect preorders to start on Amazon, Gamestop and other retailers any day now.

While Activision hasn’t made an official announcement regarding Modern Warfare 3, Kotaku says that they’ve already got the deets from multiple inside sources. First off, the game is said to release on November 8th, 2011.

According to the sources, the games plot will center around multiple cities spread throughout the world. The game is said to start where the last one left off, which was the US attempting to stave off a Russian invasion of the US.  The single player campaign will once again involve a variety of characters, including a Russian Federal Protective Services agent, SAS Operative, tank gunner, and AC-130 gunner as well as a few key characters from the previous installments.  Expect to play about 15 missions, with the first starting with the invasion of Manhattan by a Russian force and the last occurring in Duabia.

Vehicles are back in this installation, which are said to include an AC-130 gunship (gunner position) and tank.  The multiplayer mode should largely remain the same, at least at the core, but the rumor states that Infinity Ward has added two new modes, “Survival” and “Mission”.

So will this be the final installment of COD?  Since Activision has the habit of sucking as much life out of a series until it won’t sell any more, such as Guitar Hero, it’s really the gamers who decide if the series will continue on.  So will you buy another installment of COD: Modern Warfare?

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We’re gonna keep this post short and sweet.  This is what Mario would look like if it were an first person shooter.  And these are just a few of the words that come to mind: nauseating, dizzying, head-spinning, puke inducing, impossible.  However, notice the 2D view in the top left corner?  No doubt a necessity for anyone born in the the 80s.

You know what’s worse than a film based on a video game?  A film based on a video game shot entirely in first person perspective.  While the style can be effective for select scenarios it’s a mind numbing experience if the whole film is shot from this perspective.

And that’s exactly how coming soon Modern Warfare live action film has been produced, which was released via the site FindMakarov.com (it now forwards to the below YouTube video).  Originally, we thought, as did the rest of the Internet, that it was a teaser site for the soon to be revealed Modern Warfare 3 video game.  Looks like we were wrong.

The quality of the film, based on this short trailer, looks no better than “made for TV”.  Hopefully it won’t end up in movie theaters, but if it does we’re suggesting that it be yanked faster than a parachute’s rip cord.  Anyway, you can peep the footage below

Hot out the oven is EA’s first game play footage for Battlefield 3.  And we gotta say, it’s looking super tawdry.  This is just one of two teasers EA plans on releasing this month, with the second one arriving on March 16th.  No word yet on an actual release date, but we know it will arrive this fall and we’re still waiting for some deets on multiplayer along with footage.

Ealier this week Activision mailed dogs tags containing the URL Findmakarov.com.  No additional details were revealed, but visit the site and you’ll find a 5 day countdown timer in the ilk of Call Of Duty. Since the launch of COD 7 is easily more than 6 months away, our skills of deduction have deduced that once the timer reaches zero Activision will reveal the deets on the next Modern Warfare.

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We try not to stuff the site with a ton of useless game trailers and info, but every once and a while a game comes along that calls to us, sings to us and warrants a post.  L.A. Noire fit that bill and so does “Dead Island”.  The trailer is gruesome yet provides enough of an emotive experience to hold out for the game’s release later this year.

According to IGN the deets are few and far between, but they have been able to tell us it is a story based game that allows cooperative play of up to 4 players that can drop in and out as they see fit.  Alternatively, players can go at the game solo.  Apparently, you’ll start out as an everyday layman tourist and along the way acquire zombie murdering skills that are routed in a sort of mini role-playing system built into the game.

Unfortunately, this trailer doesn’t show any actual game play, but we’re hearing that it will be more realistic in terms of weaponry.  What’s that mean?  You won’t happen to stumble upon an M16 or a box of grenades as you hustle down the beach trying to avoid a horde of zombies.  Instead, you’ll reach for axes, knives, pipes and other melee weapons.  With that said, though, it does illicit a point of concern.  Will the game be redundant and how quickly will chopping into zombies, however much they splatter and explode, grow boring?

Anyway, no sense in pontificating about the unknown, but one thing is for sure, we’re anxiously awaiting the second trailer and with it some actual game play and details about the story, features and you know, all that gory jazz.

Dead Island will launch for the Xbox 360 and PS3

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We already posted our Killzone 3 review, and to say the least we liked what we saw.  In a move to help bolster hype about the game, as well as promote sales of the Playstation 3, the only console the game is available on, Sony is issuing a Killzone 3 PS3 bundle with a 160GB hard drive.  The best part you ask?  You’ll effectively score the game for free since the combo pack will cost just $300.  

If you’re so inclined, the game/bundle releases on February 22nd, and you can preorder it from Amazon for deliver the day of.

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4 out of 5 stars

Without a doubt, Nintendo not only won this generation’s console war, but they defined what it meant to be ‘next-gen.’ Intuitive, point-and-click controls married droves of non-gamers to a catalog of non-intimidating, user-friendly titles. This accessibility and catering to a broader audience, however, also created a dearth of thoughtful, well-developed games for longtime enthusiasts to enjoy with the new control scheme. Aside from a few notable departures, mostly indistinguishable collections of mini-games became the Wii’s standard.

Capable of the same gesture controls, Sony’s PlayStation Move is meant to capitalize on Nintendo’s success while not forgetting the core group of gamers. This support couldn’t be more evident than with Guerrilla Games’ Killzone 3. As a franchise known and marketed almost exclusively on its technical prowess, it’s no surprise the Move’s integration in this third iteration works like more than just an afterthought. In fact, although it’s possible to run through it with an analog controller, Killzone 3 should be the reason you buy into the Move.

In a way, the game’s Move functionality overshadows the rest of Guerrilla’s work. As far as first-person shooters go, Killzone 3 is a fairly standard action-driven experience. Corridors funnel you ever forward along your objectives as you make your way across the Helghan landscape, once again as Sergeant Thomas “Sev” Sevchenko. Picking up where the previous game leaves off, Killzone 3 is again a campaign of overcoming the odds as the ISA invasion force scrambles to retreat from a powerful Helghast army. Sometimes as one man, sometimes as part of a small squad, and sometimes in a vehicle, your goal is to escape Helghan and warn Earth of a counter-invasion while you rack up the body count with big weapons and visceral melee attacks. Of course there is a twist, a diabolical scheme not to be mentioned or spoiled—though, it’s neither groundbreaking nor enthralling.

From a storytelling perspective, Killzone 3 is hampered by an exasperated pace. The push to get you from one setpiece to another is frantic, with cutscenes that only serve to setup the next playable section. Power struggles on both sides of the battlefield create a chance for thematic exploration with dedicated exposition; instead, we’re given shouting matches. Moreover, continuity is forgotten when the game comes full circle from the in medias res introductory tutorial.

Luckily, Malcolm McDowell creates a villain you love to hate in Stahl, while Andrew Bowen injects Sev with just enough personality to make him engaging. An accompanying orchestral score sounds epic and appropriate, but it’s just not instituted effectively. Most of the soundtrack is detached from the on-screen action and serves to portray more general moods than enliven the scenes.

The thing is, once you sync the Move to your PS3, most of these outlaying criticisms excise their way out of the picture. Clearly Guerrilla are masters of the technical. The player may get a sense of weight in some minimally latent controls from analog input, but this same heft is present even once you use the Move’s light bulb to aim the cursor around with precise accuracy. Under these controls, guided one-off excursions with handheld mini-guns or powerful anti-vehicle rockets turn from aggravating moments to exciting tests of skill. With the Move in hand, gripes of too-accurate enemies give way from your own pinpoint sniping abilities.

Once you’re able to easily clear out opposition, you can gawk at the impressive artistry instituted throughout the game. The entire Helghan world is alive with background activity like a giant MAWLR laying waste to urban sprawls, or huge industrial platforms amongst floating iceberg drifts. The onslaught of eye candy can be distracting at first, but with everything from animations to assets captured and created in textured detail, the world looks almost infinitely realized. Not to mention, the span of environments varies enough to not let you become complacent in your surroundings.

Essentially, the single-player portion of Killzone 3 is familiar terrain for first-person enthusiasts: a jetpack with integrated weaponry sequence moves into a straight-up corridor shooter event, then a cutscene later it’s on to a stealth mission (with a Dusty-like companion seemingly lifted from Danger Close’s Medal of Honor). It all plays well with only a chance instance of lock-up or unsynched audio, it’s just incredibly more novel and interesting while played with Move controls, even if you can’t customize its layout to get past the Bop-it gestures for reload and melee attack actions.

This precision and one-to-one parody of movement gleefully extends into the multiplayer elements as well. While a cooperative option limits itself to split-screen, local play and follows the game’s story, online competitions showcases how the Move isn’t simply a single-player gimmick.

Warzone makes a return with its round-robin queue of games to play, hosting large maps with 24 players split between Helghast and ISA factions. Objectives rotate between capture-the-flag, territory, assassination and team deathmatch variants, but this time character classes and on-field pickups create more strategic and balanced matches. Between jetpacks, Exo mechs, mortar strikes and spawn points to capture, Warzone games open up the field of play in multiple appreciable directions.

Adding to Warzone, are two new 16-player modes: Guerrilla Warfare and Operations. Neither break any unearthed ground for the genre, however, since the former plays as a re-titled team deathmatch and the latter a composed objectives mode with cutscenes; but they both allow players to get to the type of action they want more easily.

No matter the game, the re-worked character customization is a welcomed streamlining. Using an experience system, each level you gain earns you points to specialize one of 5 classes. Unlock points are used to better primary and secondary abilities, while also getting you access to bigger and better weaponry. As for the classes themselves, there doesn’t seem to be a dominant one. A disguised Infiltrator can be picked out by a Tactician’s Recon ability by a target covering your HUD; and an Engineer’s turret can become embattled with a Tactician’s drone. Even the Medic is a fighter with silenced weapons and healing auras.

Guerrilla’s online component might be limited when compared to Call of Duty or Halo‘s community features, but it’s nevertheless accomplished with its lag-free Move integration that’s more successful than MAG‘s. Your arm may become fatigued, but your movements wont go unregistered.

No matter how you play through Killzone 3, it boils down to a typical first-person shooter experience. Interspersed on-rails moments break up the tedium usually associated with battling back waves of assaulting enemies, and standard multiplayer options are tested waters that have at least been instituted well. However, should you warm up to and adopt the Move to play through Sev’s retreat from Helghan, you’ll discover not only a much more ingeniously constructed adventure, but learn how motion controls aren’t only suited for the mini-game crowd—when done correctly, they can actually enrich even the most hardcore of games.

Killzone 3 will be available February 22. You can buy the regular edition from Amazon for $57.99 or the Helghast Collector’s Edition for $126.96

Already tired of the just released COD: Black Ops multiplayer maps?  Splendid news my FPS cohorts.  The first DLC for Black Ops, aptly titled “First Strike”, releases Feb 1st on Xbox 360 for 1200 Microsoft points – it will release shortly after on the PS3.

The DLC contains 5 new maps, featuring 4 multiplayer maps and a new Zombie level. It include the “Berlin Wall”, allowing combat on both sides of the imposing wall; “Discovery”, a desolate, frozen German outpost in the Arctic; “Kowloon”, battle in the rain along the rooftops of a towering Chinese sprawl; “Stadium”, an intense locale with a pro hockey arena backdrop; and “Ascension”, where you fight zombies in a Soviet launch facility.

Hit the trailer after the ‘leap’

It’s $59.99 – $10 instant off + free S&H = $49.99!

Of note, Amazon has it with a $20 game credit good for a future game purchase for $59.99 + free ship = $59.99!

Just a little reminder that MW2′s Resurgence map pack arrives today.  Let’s hope they don’t ‘f’ this one up like they did the last.  Actually, it looks like they’re slowly rolling this one out just in case they run into any problems.

For the price of 1200 MS points you’ll get 3 new boards and 2 old boards found in MW1.  There is “Carnival”, an abandoned amusement park; “Fuel”, a massive oil refinery; “Trailer Park”, a maze of mobile estates; “Strike” and “Vacant”, both of which were found in the COD4.

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Until today the latest Call of Duty title, “Black Ops”, was all but a rumor.  Now Activision has launched a teaser site that confirms the name and launch date, which is 11/9/10.  Twitter and Facebook pages are in full swing and Treyarch is the studio developing the title.   The ‘world premiere teaser’ will launch tonight on Spike TV at 12:40am and will be followed by online distribution to sites such as Game Trailers and more.

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Available for the PS3 and Xbox 360, Amazon has Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 for $59.99 – $15 instant savings + $0 S&H = $44.99 shipped! This is the lowest price we’ve seen for this game EVER.

Modern Warfare 2 is a first-person tactical shooter and the sixth entry in the popular Call of Duty series. True to its name and following the lead of its predecessor, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, it places players in modern combat settings, as opposed to the WWII environments of the earlier Call of Duty games. This modern approach brings with it new weapons, action and options. Coupled with a variety of gameplay modes including single player, multiplayer and the co-op Special Ops Mode, it is destined to be one of the most popular games of 2009 and a worthy addition to the Call of Duty series.