One of Russia's most distinguished game developer and publisher, 1C company, has announced two new game projects that will be their first on the next generation consoles. The two games are based on Captain Blood novels and the successful IL-2 Sturmovik flight combat simulation series.  Both are now heading to the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 (to North America with help), but even handhelds will feel some love as well.

After just a few months of waiting comes the good news that Treyarch's current project, Call of Duty 5 (PS3, Xbox 360, PC, Wii, DS), is finally playable. Will we have a demo soon, then? We hope that it won't be a long wait until then. More details in the full article!

Long-running British developing and publishing company Codemasters have a lot of goodies already lined-up for everyone in the coming year.

Rod Cousens, CEO of Codemasters announced that the new titles reflect the driving grown in the North American market and will focus on content geared for the American consumer

Check out the line-up right after the jump!

It's been a few days since Halloween, so we'd rather honor the most memorable deaths that made gamers shriek, throw tantrums, and cry. Of course, along the line are deaths so dramantic, shocking, or simply sad that they're difficult to forget. In other words, a list of characters who died in ways that scarred our minds, or those we felt so attached to that seeing them perish became emotional. If it's not obvious enough, we'll have to warn you about major spoilers that await.

It's hard not to be excited about this holiday season when great games are about to hit the shelves. We kid not when we say just looking at Ubisoft's line-up of upcoming titles will give any gamer a field day pondering which one to spend money on. If Assassin's Creed (PS3, Xbox 360, PC) and Haze can't get you riled up, others will.

Ubisoft didn't include solid dates in the list sent through the press wire, but most are coming before 2007 ends. Here are the games:

• Assassin's Creed: One of the most anticipated video games of the year will be coming to the Xbox 360 and the PS3 in November, while the PC version will be out in early 2008.
• Beowulf: Based on Paramount Pictures' and Shangri-La Entertainment's Beowulf, the upcoming feature film from Academy Award-winning director Robert Zemeckis, Beowulf will be released in November on Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's PS3 and PSP.
• Blazing Angels 2 Secret Missions of WWII: Currently available on the Xbox 360, experience World War II on the PS3 this coming holiday. Play as an elite pilot in the follow-up to the successful Blazing Angels Squadrons of WWII.
• Brothers In Arms Hell's Highway: Previously expected to be released for holiday 2007, it will be released on next-generation platforms and the PC in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2007 to 2008. Brothers in Arms Road to Hill 30 for the Nintendo Wii will be released in December.
• CSI: Crime Scene Investigation Hard Evidence: For the first time, CSI fans will be able to play CSI on the Xbox 360 and on the Wii this holiday.
• Haze: Free Radical Design teams up with Ubisoft to deliver the mind-altering, technologically superior game Haze, exclusively for the Sony PS3 this holiday.
• Heroes of Might and Magic V: Tribes of the East: Enjoy the dramatic evolution and conclusion of the Heroes V experience this holiday on PC.
• Nitrobike: Navigate rocket-propelled motorcycles in this arcade-style game exclusively for the Wii.
• Naruto: Rise of a Ninja: In a game exclusively developed for Xbox 360 from the ground up, players will be able to experience becoming a shinobi as the game starts from the series' beginning. The game is given an October release date.
  
• Rayman Raving Rabbids 2: The bunnies are back and are crazier than ever in this new game specially developed for the Nintendo Wii and the Nintendo DS this holiday.

Casual gamers aren't left behind, thanks to Ubisoft's massive library. Chessmaster series fans might want to look at Chessmaster: The Art of Learning (DS) and Chessmaster: Grandmaster Edition (PC). Cranium Kabooki is a party game on the Nintendo Wii with fun minigames like jamming, drawing, and acting. Imagine games are set to capture the ladies with Fashion Designer, Master Chef, and Animal Doctor on the Nintendo DS.

Another line of games from Ubisoft is My Coach which has titles like My French Coach, My Spanish Coach, and My Word Coach that appear on Nintendo platforms to expand our vocabulary. There's also Petz that comes in all flavors of pet training for the DS, PS2, PC, and Wii.

There's a bit of bad news for all of you waiting for Warner Brothers Interactive Entertainment's Looney Tunes games. It turns out that the original release date of September 18, 2007 has been scratched from the launch calendar and replaced with October 9.

Looney Tunes: Acme Arsenal and Looney Tunes: Duck Amuck were set to ship next month in North America but were delayed by the publisher for undisclosed reasons. Acme Arsenal, due out for the Nintendo Wii and the Microsoft Xbox 360 game consoles, puts players in the shoes of their favorite characters from the classic cartoon line and drops them in locales like Ancient Egypt and the World War II trenches where they'll have to solve puzzles, perform objectives, and drive around with wacky vehicles to proceed to the next level.

Unique to the Wii version is the implementation of  gesture-based controls while the Xbox 360 iteration has the advantage of  online co-op play via the Xbox Live service.

Duck Amuck, on the other hand, goes out for the Nintendo DS and features everyone's favorite animated duck Daffy in a game based on the classic Duck Amuck cartoon. The objective is simple: Use your stylus to drive Daffy nuts in a series of mini games that will have you thinking of clever ways to punk your rival. Like Acme Arsenal, this game was set to go out on September 18 but has been delayed to October 9.

We already told you about the Virtual Console games who joined the growing collection of European and Australian VC titles, now we'll be telling you about the Wii and DS games who are making their way in Australian store shelves. High-profile titles such as Sonic and the Secret Rings and DBZ: Budokai Tenkaichi 2 are in the list. So for our Aussie readers, we give you the game's you should expect this February and March.

Wii games

• Excite Truck - February 22
• Sonic and the Secret Rings - March 8
• Bionicle Heroes - March
• Kororinpa - March 1
• DragonBall Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 2 - March 2
• SSX Blur - March 15
• Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07 - March 15
• World Series of Poker: Tournament of Champions - March 15
• Rapala Tournament Fishing - March 22
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - March 22
• Wing Island - March 29
• Blazing Angels: Squadrons of World War II - March 29
• Prince of Persia: Rival Swords - March 29
• Medal of Honor: Vanguard - March 29

DS games

• Hotel Dusk: Room 215 - February 22
• Kirby Squeak Squad - March 1
• Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - March 8

The Akrid-infested game has been dislodged by a World War II inspired RTS in the UK Charts. After lording over other games for UK for quite some time, Capcom's Lost Planet slipped to sixth place; the new number one game in the all-charts format this week is Eidos' Battlestations: Midway. Not far behind is Little Britain (PC, PSP), who was edged out by Battlestations by just 1,000 units. Here are the games that entered the top 10 of the UK all-format charts:

1. Battlestations: Midway (Eidos)
   
2. Little Britain (Blast Entertainment Ltd.)
   
3. FIFA '07 (EA)
   
4. Winning Eleven: Pro Evolution Soccer 2007 (Konami)
   
5. SEGA Mega Drive Collection (SEGA)
   
6. Lost Planet (Capcom)
   
7. Need for Speed: Carbon (EA)
   
8. The Sims 2: Pets (EA)
   
9. New Super Mario Bros. (Nintendo)
   
10. Cars (THQ)

As for the big movers in the chart, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess is down 13 spots to number 26 while Wii Play fell from number 7 to 27. New entries for this week are Avatar: The Legend of Aang and Okami.

Konami has recently announced that they're cooking up a new action game for the DS called Time Ace. In the said game, you'll get to take on the role of Dr. Clock who's faced with the mission of reclaiming his time machine from his sneaky assistant Dr. Klaus Scythe.

The game is set in 1914, wherein Dr. Hugo Clock created this time machine to go back to the World War I era and prevent that war from taking place. However, his assistant, Dr. Klaus Scythe, steals his time machine with a sinister plan to acquire the most powerful weapons known in history to...[make a wild guess..] yep, to rule the world.

So anyway, here are some of the game's features we were able to score via Konami:

• 3D aerial shooting action across more than 18 levels and 9 historical eras
• Acquire and fly the aircraft of the past, present and future, from World War II bombers to modern fighter jets and futuristic marvels of airborne destruction
• Collect power-ups to modify the speed, durability, firepower and maneuverability of your aircraft
• High-flying mini-games for up to four players, including races and intense dogfights via local wireless connection
  

Rated E by ESRB, Time Ace is said to be slated for release spring this year.

Credits go to Nintendic for the image used above.

Nibris, the Polish game developer, could be compared to an indie rock band in the sense that it's just one of a handful of game developers who chose to not take the mainstream road and independently create games for Nintendo. Independent and enigmatic are the two things that best describe the company, as it takes a while for them to update us with their projects- the black and white, gothic horror game Sadness and the shooter game Raid Over the River.

Now, Nibris game designer and art director Marek Okron granted an interview with Cubed3 and talked about Raid Over the River. It's just too bad that he didn't kill two birds with one stone as he didn't give an update about the going-ons with Sadness.

He mentions that Nibris aims to create the best shooter ever with Raid and their ticket to that could be the fact that they have new ideas to introduce to the community which would be told via a story mode strictly related to onscreen actions. Aside from that, he hopes to win them over with the game's intuitive controls, new boss fight approaches, and your ships special abilities which isn't just fire power.

The team is also shying away from the shooter-game stigma - wherein most games falling in this category tends to fall short in the plot department. He mentions that "story mode at "easy" level will be a challenging, yet not frustrating, experience. There will be a lot of action, a few plot twists and spectacular air battles - for everyone who wants to play it." He also realizes the fact that there are some gamers who don't really give a rat's behind about the story, so the game also has an arcade mode which is all about the kills, points and scraping enemy bullets.

When asked about influences to create the game, Okron mentioned the Don Pachi series which according to him is "difficult but fun to play." Their unit designs were influenced by historic designs like German airplanes designs from the era of World War II. He also expressed Nibris' desire to work with Pikmin because of "loads of creativity." Something to look forward to? Well, dreaming is still free, so that's all we could do for now.