Namco Bandai has revealed the official title for Mobile Suit Gundam - Crossfire. In this upcoming PS3 game, players find themselves caught in the crossfire between the Earth Federation and Zeon forces nine months into the conflict. Players will be given a choice whether to join the Federation Army or to pledge their allegiance with the Zeon.

Mobile Suit Gundam: Crossfire is slated for release later this year.

Techland has announced Warhound, an upcoming first-person shooter that puts players in the role of a mercenary cleaning up the world of evil. Scoop:

Warhound is an FPP shooter where you make a career of the elite mercenary. When you are not working, you get new licenses and improve. When at work, you take part in the hottest world conflicts

Because you are a Warhound - an elite mercenary on the side of good.

The choice is yours. You’ve got a laptop and a map of the world. Presidents, businessmen, and ordinary people ask you for help where nothing more can be done officially. You choose a mission, then fly, clean and disappear. You get the reward and nobody knows anything.

Will you lead your carrier to reach the top?

GAME FEATURES

• Manage your carrier. SOS messages come from many places. Freely plan you way of a mercenary.
  
• Develop your skills. Gain the license of an Alpinist to climb harder and harder rocks, learn to operate new vehicles - from jeep to tanks and boats; practice shooting and test weapons on your own firing ground.
  
• Fight the way you want. Each mission has a number of ways to reach the goal. The number depends on your abilities.
  
• Go back to where you already fought. Enemies are like weed which revive in uncultivated soil. Many missions can be repeated many times.
  
• Manage your equipment. Buy better weapons and trade the equipment found on the battleground.
  
• Use the intelligence service. Buy information that will allow you to learn more about your enemy.
  
• Specialize. By completing tasks of given type you become a specialist. Build your reputation which will bring you new orders and will open the way to the top of the ranking.

TECHNICAL FEATURES

• Support for all modern per-pixel lighting and rendering techniques, including:
  
  • 64-bit color High Dynamic Range rending pipeline
    
  • virtual displacement mapping, multi-bump mapping,
    
  • wide range of post-processing effects (depth-of-field, light blooms, refraction, heat distortion)
    
  • high quality pre-computed lighting with ambient occlusion
    
  • pre-computed shadow masks, omni-projector lights
  
  
• High quality Spherical Harmonics Lighting
  
• Outdoor light scattering simulation
  
• Dynamic shadows based on global hierarchical shadow-maps using hardware shadow mapping
  
• High quality character models built from high-poly meshes using normal maps (bump mapping)
  
• Multi-morphtarget facial mimics
  
• Accurate simulation and animation of vegetation, fumes and smokes - reaction to wind, moving object, etc.
  
• Global Physics simulation system including the simulation of:
  
  • rigid body dynamics, clothes, next generation muscle-skeleton ragdoll
    
  • natural phenomena simulation: fire, smoke, liquid, electricity and wind effects,
    
  • objects properties influence with liquids
    
  • surface parameters such as friction
  
  
• Effective and easy to use authoring tools
  
• Real time multi-layer foliage generation

The game is yet to carry a release date.

Two patches:

• F.E.A.R. v1.07 on the Sierra, 3D Downloads, 3D Gamers, FileFront and Worthplaying
  
• Strategic Command 2: Blitzkrieg on Battlefront

• Broken Sword: The Angel of Death on 3D Gamers, FileFront, Gameguru Mania, Gamer’s Hell and Worthplaying

1Up reports that Microsoft’s soccer-exclusivity announcement at the Leipzig Games Convention may not be so exclusive. Speaking with Pro Evolution Soccer producer/creator Shingo ‘Seabass’ Takatsuka, the reporter learned that Microsoft’s claims weren’t true: “We never said exclusive for one year on the next-gen platforms. We said this year. We were agreed that it was this year.”

As per Takatsuka, Pro Evolution Soccer is exclusive to Xbox 360 this year only and not the “twelve” months Microsoft announced. It may be the same with FIFA07, as sources are indicating so. However, an official comment from EA is yet to come.

Just to show how popular Penny Arcade has become, and how much their dark influence is corrupting our souls, Hothead Games in conjunction with Penny Arcade has announced plans for a cross-platform episode game based on the comic’s characters and universe.

“We’re really excited to be working with Hothead Games on our first electronic adventure,” said writer Jerry Holkins, his clawed feet resting atop a huge slab of granite. “From the moment we laid eyes on them, it was clear they had the technical and creative chops to execute our grim vision. Now that we have pooled our strengths, our dark work may truly begin.” Holkins then paused to eat a rat whole.

The first game, entitled Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness, will be a comic adventure game initially available for Windows, Mac OSX, and Linux. It will also be released for next-generation consoles later. The game will be available via digital download and will be delivered in episodic format with new content coming out several times a year.

No release date was announced.

The last of the “bedroom programmers” Introversion Software has announced that it will release its third title, DEFCON, at the end of September. Following the release of Uplink and Darwinia (both excellent games), DEFCON will retail on Introversion’s online store at £10 for download, and £12.50 for a download with a boxed copy (sent by post).

Gamers who pre-order the title from mid-September, they will be able to get a complimentary boxed copy of the game for £10. DEFCON will also be available in a bundle pack with Darwinia and Uplink for £30.

North Americans will be able to purchase the game through Steam and at other retail outlets for $15 towards the end of September.