An interesting look at what could of been for the Call of Duty franchise comes from The Verge this week. They profiled Call of Duty: Devil’s Brigade, a third-person shooter spin-off of the game that incorporated mechanics new to the franchise. It was also nine months into development before Activision decided to cancel it.

The game was in development by Underground Development in 2007 while Infinity Ward was hard at work on the original Modern Warfare. The game was set in Italy during World War II and utilized more strategic mechanics than COD players are typically used to. Some of these mechanics highlighted in the report include stealth kills, squad-based commands and exploration, and parkour moves that Lead Designer Kyle Brink described as “crazy athletic stuff that goes far beyond the run/duck/shoot stuff you saw in shooters of that era.” Keep Reading

Taking the franchise even further outside just Sony platforms, Kojima Productions has seemingly announced development on a new MGS title that could see the franchise running on the PC in addition to consoles. Kojima and his team are recruiting new talent “to help develop next-gen game engine technology for use with the ‘FOX Engine’.”

A job listing on the Konami website titled, “BIG BOSS wants YOU! THE “NEXT” MGS”, said Konami will be attending the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco next month in search of fresh blood. ” Kojima Productions will be returning to the GDC Career Pavilion (March 6th – 9th) to search for skillful engineers, artists, and game creators…” (booth, #1914 – Career Pavilion)

With Kojima Productions currently working with fellow Japanese Studio Platinum Games on Metal Gear Rising, and its growing interest in collaboration, it seems as though Kojima has decided to create the “Next” Metal Gear Solid both in Japan and stateside. Keep Reading

With 870 gajillion more guns, and 96.5 percent more wub wub, “Get ready to joy puke your face off”? The new Borderlands 2 trailer has been released and is embedded below for your consumption. Among the game’s new features, the trailer reveals both the North American release date, September 14th, and international release slated for three days later on Sept. 21. Does this make Borderlands one the most anticipated games of 2012?

“Pandora has changed, are you ready?”

The FPS/RPG hybrid shows off a number of details about the game itself and how it will differ from its predecessor. Not only does the trailer tell us that Borderlands 2 “just got bazilliondier”, after what felt like an eternity, we actually get a good look at some of the game in the trailer. Keep Reading

When we told you about The Top 50 videogame endings of all time included in the Guinness World Records 2012 Gamer’s Edition, there was clearly some backlash. Not just at the top pick– Call of Duty: Black Ops– but at the entire list.

We wanted to delve a little deeper into exactly what the gaming community thinks about the list, and moreover, exactly what game endings gamers really consider the best of all time.

Not surprisingly, a quick poll of everyone at JaceHallShow.com and our friends within the gaming community have allowed us to come up with a list of our own– Keep Reading

There are endless iPhone cases meant to protect your device, but the SmartGuard from self-defense gadget maker Piexon might be the first that actually protects the user. Your iPhone might not usually be the first thing you reach for to defend youself, but with an integrated pepper spray canister, SmartGuard might do the trick.

The SmartGuard is definitely not a toy, packing in a powerful 10% Oleoresin Capsicum (2 Mio SHU) and range of five feet (1.5 meters). Due to its size you’ll only get 6 total 1/2 second shots per canister, but that’s more than enough to take down an attacker with a precisely aimed burst.

The only concern that immediately comes to mind is having to hold a can of pepper spray Keep Reading

How close did the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 box cover art get to the real thing? We finally know exactly how close with Reddit user and real life American soldier serving in Afghanistan, Travissimo, posting his recreation of the artwork created using an image of a real solider in action.

When you think about soldiers on tour in Afghanistan the word “bored” usually doesnt come to mind, but Travissimo seemed to have time to create one the most impressive renditions of the cover to date. He and a freind decided to mimic the now unforgettable pose and edit it into the existing box art… Keep Reading

We know Foxconn factories around the world assemble approximately 40 percent of the world’s consumer electronics products, the most popular of which are of course Apple’s iDevices and, for us gamers, Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo consoles. Shrouded in secrecy for years, Foxconn’s Chinese factory doors were finally opened to Bill Weir, anchor of ABC’s Nightline.

We’ve heard some pretty loud allegations in past weeks stemming from NYT’s investigative reports detailing Apple’s supply chain, but this is the first time we’ve got a look behind the doors.

A preview of the special (below) is available via ABC.com, host Bill Weir explained: Keep Reading

The online project-funding site Kickstarter has been in a lot of headlines as of late. First we told you about two Kickstarter projects that reached 1 million dollars in funding, and just today a 17-inch Windows tablet being built by a 12-year old. However, an interesting new take on game development (via The Verge) is definitely something that has our attention. Rather than just an online course, “Code Hero” aims to teach you how to build games through a first-person videogame.

Alex Peake and Primer Labs have come up with the innovative and intuitive way to learn how to code games and hope you’re interested in making their plans come to reality. Built on the Unity 3D Engine, Code Hero uses a series of missions and, for the most part, familiar mechanics to both teach the player about coding and allow them to build their own Untiy games while playing. Keep Reading

With tablets quickly taking over the PC market, one 12 year old from California is thinking about the bigger picture, literally. While the average size of a tablet’s display typically ranges from 5- to 10-inches, tech fanatic James Hardman is taking the tablet game up a notch with a 17-inch Windows-powered tab he plans on manufacturing.

With a goal of $50,000 in funding, Hardman turned to Kickstarter to realize his dreams and posted his plans for the 17-inch super tablet. Oh, and according to him, the device is 5.1x as powerful as iPad 2.

James spoke to Mashable regarding his overarching motivation behind the project.

“I personally love bigger screens,” says the 12 year old Hardman, “And I know other people did, too. I looked everywhere and nobody had anything Keep Reading

With playable demos already heating up Xbox Live and PSN, a few pre-release copies of Mass Effect 3, set for release on PC, PS3, and Xbox 360 on March 6, have been launched into space. These copies will be landing in the hands of a few lucky recipients who will get to play the game before it officially hits stores.

USAToday reports publisher EA has launched copies attached to weather balloons over San Francisco, Las Vegas, New York, Paris, and London. You won’t have to aimlessly go looking for a copy that might land near you, as EA will allow you to track the game’s onboard GPS tracker on masseffect.com. Of course, it will be first come first service when the copies ultimately land safely back on terra firma. Keep Reading

It’s no secret that Apple leads the mobile industry in providing accessibility features to people with disabilities. Apple even published a “Commitment to Accessibility” on its website and has been awarded with several honors related to accessibility features like VoiceOver and support for braille displays in iOS 5. With Siri, Apple has an even greater opportunity to revolutionize the way disabled people interact with their devices.

One heartwarming example of this comes from a man who lost his voice as a child but recently took the stage for his very first stand-up comedy gig with the help of a text-to-voice app and an iPad.

ElectricPig pointed us to the video of Lee Ridley, aka ‘Lost Voice Guy’, who took the stage using the ‘Speak It!’ iPad app to covert text into the voice you hear in the video (below). Ridley has Keep Reading

In case you are wondering exactly what is inside of Sony’s new PlayStation Vita that isn’t listed on the device’s specs page, the guys and gals at iFixit are at it once again, this time tearing apart the PS Vita right down to the motherboard. At the same time, we get a look at what we can expect to be playing on the device in the near future with the release of a new Mortal Kombat trailer featuring the Vita and a little background music from Skrillex.

If you’re unfamiliar with iFixit’s usual routine, their main goal is to find out how easy and cost efficient our new devices will be to repair. To do that, they have to tear them apart, and in the process we get a look inside the device and learn exactly what we’re dealing with for hardware Sony doesn’t typically disclose. Keep Reading

Apple today introduced a developer preview of its next major operating system for Macs called OS X  10.8 Mountain Lion. While the “Mountain Lion” moniker follows on with Apple’s tradition of naming OS releases after cats, one big change to the name is the omission of “Mac”. Apple is dropping the “Mac” from “Mac OS X”, a big change for the operating system that has used “Mac OS” as its identify for 10+ years.

The move is parter of a larger change for Apple and OS X that sees the entire operating system merging with the work done on the iOS operating system for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. Mountain Lion incorporates many features that Keep Reading

As of January 2012 development on Lego Minecraft became official and roughly a month later the 480 piece set dubbed Lego Minecraft Micro World debuted at the Bella Center for Lego World Copenhagen.

Originally brought to Lego Cuusoo, where its users vote for new prototype Lego ideas among other things, the Mojang idea received enough support (over 10, 000 votes) to become a reality.

“Minecraft is about placing blocks to build anything you can imagine in the virtual world. You can build anything you imagine with LEGO bricks in the physical world. Minecraft and LEGO were meant to be together.”   Keep Reading

After some initial delays on the Twisted Metal front, the game finally dropped on Valentines Day with some pretty decent reviews rolling in from gaming press worldwide. An interesting bit of news out of Hollywood today (via Deadline.com), we’ve learned an upcoming movie for the franchise is possibly in the works.

It appears as though Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance co-director Brian Taylor is slated to both write and direct the upcoming Hollywood adaption of Twisted Metal. With Sony pictures seemingly locking Brian in with a hefty seven figure pre emptive deal, Spider-Man Films producer, Avi Arad, is also in connection with the picture. Arad is also behind the upcoming 3D The Amazing Spider-Man. Keep Reading

Originally released in 2007, Portal has made its way to just about every platform but has yet to make its way onto the big mobile operating systems. Luckily it will soon be coming to at least one, Android, thanks to the hard work of some third-party devs and the Unity 3D Engine.

Although this isn’t an official port (no involvement from Valve) the first-person puzzle-platformer appears to already be running in beta based on the February 11th YouTube video uploaded by AndroidPolice (below). The video shows a screen capture of version 0.004 running on an Android device, and that build is already available to download to all. Keep Reading

If you can get around the cost of Kinect for Windows, $250, you’re going to begin seeing more great apps being released that add voice and gesture control support to your favorite Windows apps (not just games).

Thanks to a new app from from third party developer Brad Mauk, you can now control the Windows 7 Media Center app completely with voice commands, pinches and waves of your hands. Keep Reading

Jordan Mechner, the creator of Prince Persia, is slated to remake his 1984 game Karateka (definined as ‘practitioner of karate’). The martial arts based game, published by Brøderbund in the United States (Ariolasoft in Europe), was one of Mechner’s first successful games. Programmed and designed during his tenure at Yale University, Karateka became well-known for its realistic animations and immersive musical cues.

First released on the Apple II and later for the Atari ST, Commodore 64, Famicom and the Game Boy among others, Karateka can be described as a side-scrolling fighter set in feudal Japan where the player is tasked to save the princess Mariko from the grasps of the games antagonist Akuma. The combat allowed for both Keep Reading

If you’ve ever wanted to easily remove someone from a photo that is otherwise perfect, up until now it hasn’t been an easy task. Remove, an app from Scaldo, aims to let you snap a photo and selectively remove people and objects from the image with a tap of your finger, right on your smartphone.

The company is set to demo its Remove app, which will be available for both iOS and Android, at this year’s Mobile World Congress taking place later this month in Barcelona, Spain. According to Scaldo, the app is the “world’s first optical removal software” for mobile devices. Keep Reading

With the controversy over Metal Gear Rising spawning from the 2011 VGA’s fading, the latest from Japanese publisher Konami is the announcement that Metal Gear Online will be taken down for good come later this year on June 12th. MGO was available for four years having first launched in June of 2008.

Konami has released a brief schedule detailing the incremental take down of the various features available in the Metal Gear online world that could start as early as next month. As of March 21st, it is confirmed that the MGO Online Shop will be closed indefinitely.

Take note Keep Reading