Midway and Epic Games announce that the beta demo for Unreal Tournament 3, the highly anticipated first-person-shooter. The beta demo consists of three different action-packed Deathmatch and Vehicle Capture the Flag maps: HeatRay, ShangriLa and Suspense.

Midway and Epic Games announce that the beta demo for Unreal Tournament 3, the highly anticipated first-person-shooter. The beta demo consists of three different action-packed Deathmatch and Vehicle Capture the Flag maps: HeatRay, ShangriLa and Suspense. All maps in the demo can be played locally against bots, or online against human opponents. Unreal Tournament 3 is currently slated to ship in November for PC. Get ready to get your frag on!

HeatRay (Deathmatch):
This battle takes place in a night-time urban setting. Players battle over who gets to use a Dark Walker super weapon after it is spawned by a passing drop-ship. If you manage to get it, be sure to rack up the kills quickly since everyone will be gunning for you. The Dark Walker is like a giant piñata — when it dies it drops a U-Damage and a Berzerk power-up. If you want to stay hidden from the Dark Walker keep an eye out for the Invisibility power-up.

ShangriLa (Deathmatch):
A stark contrast to HeatRay’s moody setting, ShangriLa is a sunny, tranquil map set high in the Izanagi Mountains. This map is designed in the traditional style of big Team Deathmatch maps, so it should please the most hardcore UT Deathmatch players. Fight over the U-damage in the central courtyard, or try to control the Shield-belt alley. You can find jumpboots in a vulnerable spot at the end of a dock, but the risk is worth the reward as they will go a long way toward helping you control the map.

Suspense (Vehicle Capture the Flag):
Set on a massive suspension bridge deep in Axon territory, this map is a playground of gameplay possibilities. It’s a favorite in Epic office playtests because you can find almost all the Axon vehicles, as well as the Redeemer super-weapon. Whether you are sniping from the bridge towers, camping with the tank, towing hover-boarding flag-runners from your Raptor, controlling the redeemer from underneath the bridge, bombarding from afar with Hellfire SPMA artillery, or doing fast attacks with Manta’s and Scorpions, everyone will find something they love doing in Suspense.

Get it here: UT3 Demo

And here: UT3Demo

Icuiti’s iWear VR920 is the winner of the 2007 CES innovations award. Featuring 640×480 VGA progressive scan LCDs with a 32 degree field of view, this is our most immersive big screen experience yet.

Designed with the PC gamer in mind, the VR920 includes a built in microphone and three degree of freedom head tracker allowing for the definitive online interactive gaming experience.

The VR920’s twin hi-res displays mean that it can flaunt your favorite virtual worlds in full 3D. Weighing a mere three ounces, this comfortable and non-intrusive iWear is VR done right. Jack in and feed your head!

Website: iWear VR920

Frets on Fire is a Finnish music video game created by Sami Kyöstilä in which players use the keyboard to play along with scrolling on-screen musical notes to complete a song, and is a clone of the Guitar Hero video game series. Frets on Fire is open-source software.

The gameplay of Frets on Fire is the same as in Guitar Hero - the player emulates playing a guitar. Frets on Fire is meant to be played by picking up the keyboard like a guitar, with one hand pressing the fret buttons and another pressing the pick buttons. There is support for joysticks however, meaning that the Guitar Hero controllers can be used as well.

Colored markers appear on the screen, synchronized with the song, and are played by holding the fret buttons of the correct color (F1 through F5) and pressing one of the pick buttons (Enter or Shift) at the correct moment. Every ten correct hits increase the score multiplier, which multiplies the points for every hit by up to four times. The multiplier is reset in case of a miss.

Since version 1.2.438, the game features hammer-on and pull-off (commonly abbreviated to HOPO) notes. A HOPO note allows the player to press only its fret button to play if the previous note was played correctly. Bugs were found in the new gameplay element, and version 1.2.451 fixed them, along with adding an option to disable HOPO notes.

Features:

- Three default songs by Tommi Inkilä, along with the ability to import songs from Guitar Hero and Guitar Hero II and add songs made by others; Also one done by Scenery Channel officially for FoF, downloadable from their website
- Unique inverted keyboard gameplay style
- Support for guitar controllers and generic joysticks
- Includes a song editor for making your own tunes
- Compete with others on the World Charts
- Hundreds of songs composed by the community
- Supports importing Guitar Hero™ I and Guitar Hero™ II songs
- Multiplatform; runs on Windows™, Linux®, Mac OS X™ and FreeBSD®
- Open source, full Python source code available

Get it here: Frets On Fire