Seriously, how awesome have the past few hours been? Engadget turns the design stakes up to 11, Google finally dishes the dirt on Chrome OS, and now you can even download the forthcoming software to have a fiddle with yourself. It's completely free, though you'll need VMWare running atop a Windows, Linux or OS X installation to make the magic happen. Naturally, we've been considerate enough to provide download links for everything you'll require at the source below, so get those fingers clicking.

...We've had a chance to have a quick and dirty snoop around Chrome OS and our early conclusions are rather predictable. This really is a browser with an OS attached rather than vice versa. You get your tab-based navigation up top, and the focus is of course on the internet, with minimal option buttons on the far right and app launchers at the top left. Unfortunately, in order to access the more interesting apps, one requires a Google.com login which we do not have, so we were stuck gazing at only the Gmail and Calendar applications. They act and function much like their online counterparts, but for the significant lag and choppiness that may be attributed to the still very early stage of development or the fact it's running on a virtual machine.

Yup. You read that right. Modern Warfare 2 PC now has dedicated servers.

Wait, PC gamers! Before you send Bobby Kotick a thank you letter, know that it wasn't they who did it, but rather the gamers who took Infinity Ward and Activition's attempts to lock down the game as a challenge. And bring it those gamers did, managing to hack in the developer console and enable the ability to set up dedicated servers. Keep in mind, the game hasn't even been out a week.

Perhaps some of the boycotters caught playing the game were not being hypocrites, but rather hard at work turning the highest-profile shafting of PC gamers right around, as the video below might demonstrate.

Just as a FYI. (Click for the full thing)

According to "internal Activision estimates", Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 didn't just have a good launch, it had "the biggest launch in history across all forms of entertainment".

This claim is based on sell-through sales, with Activision bean-counters reporting the game managed to pull in $310 million in its first 24 hours on sale. And that's not a worldwide number, that's just in North America and the UK. $310 million. In a single day. In three countries.

Sure, games cost more than a movie ticket, but $310 million in 24 hours is still a mighty impressive number, regardless of the admission price.

Just picked up from Richard Cobbett’s twitter, it appears that Interplay are re-releasing Planescape Torment. Its release date is listed as the 30th October and the price is a — not-much-change-from-the-nature-of-twenty-quid — 17.99 of your Earth pounds. In fact, it appears to be a whole load of Interplay other material too. It’s a surprise to see a decade-old game released at a mid-range price… but it’s also one that I find hard to argue against. A game that’s still placing high in all-time lists, that’s been unavailable for years, that goes for full-price when it turns up on eBay and hasn’t been superseded in any way. If the gaming equivalent of the Beatle’s price never going down and this means that Dan Gril has no excuse but to finally return Alec’s copy to him. Hand it back, you bast.

It's not often that the two most popular operating systems get major updates so close to each other, so we couldn't resist throwing them into a cage match together. Already we can hear some of you screaming that Snow Leopard isn't a major update--we know this one's personal! But is Windows 7 nothing more than "Vista done right"?

This is the operating system that Windows Vista should have been. Windows 7 is gorgeously designed, without sacrificing functionality; it prioritises security, without constantly interfering; it performs well, without demanding hardware; and it does what Microsoft has promised all along - simplifying everyday tasks and working the way you want.

DirectX is the most important interface between the graphics card and a computer game. It is this API that allows game developers to write their code without having to worry too much about the hardware in the gamers’ computers.

More than 60,000 supporters thus far have shown up to petition for dedicated "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2" servers following Infinity Ward's confirmation over the weekend that it would use a player-to-player matchmaking system, much like what's used for Xbox Live and PSN play. The program, called IWnet, provoked responses from PC server supporters, eventually resulting in the petition directed toward Infinity Ward.

"Get Infinity Ward to review their decision not to allow fully dedicated servers for their forthcoming game release 'CoD:MW2," the petition, titled "Dedicated Servers for CoD:MW2," reads. "Remember that this 'Call of Duty' was made popular by PC Gamers who have supported the series throughout."

Infinity Ward's community manager Robert Bowling confirmed for the BASH podcast that "Modern Warfare 2" would opt for a more console-like experience during online PC play with their IWnet direction.

A German advocacy group has organized an event designed to get participants to bring their “killer games” to in order to dispose of them in a trash can.

Aktionsbündnis Amoklauf Winnenden, or Action Alliance (loosely translated), has setup the event for this Saturday, October 17 in front of the Stuttgart State Opera. One game tosser will win a signed jersey from the German national soccer team. No word on what will be done with the “donated” games, but presumably they will be smashed or discarded in some way.

Australia's long nation nightmare of maybe not being able to play Left 4 Dead 2 may soon be over, as the government's media ratings board has apparently issued the zombie shooter a rating of MA-15+.

That would essentially mean an end to the "ban" on Valve's PC and Xbox 360 sequel and translate into "good news" for our Survivor friends down under. No word yet on whether Valve's appeal was successful and/or if the company had to submit the edited version of the game for the Australian release.

Now that the cat is out of the bag and Disney Epic Mickey has been revealed to the world, we thought it would be a great time to explore the world of Warren Spector. No, not the dark, shadowy world gamers are used to. The world that Spector has been living in his whole life. From birth, he was destined to work in the Magic Kingdom. From wearing mouse ears at just a year old to owning a second house filled with rare memorabilia, it’s safe to say that Disney is in his blood.

With the formation of Junction Point, Spector has been handed the task of reimaging the most recognized cartoon character of all time. While that’s no easy task, it starts to become clear after watching our video interview why the invaluable property is in good hands.

The Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II - The Sith Lords Restored Content project has entered open beta after years of development.

Instructions and download locations can be found on the Deadly Stream forum (spotted by EG reader Garthy).

The Restored Content project - as the name suggests - aims to reinstate much of the lost content found on the KOTOR2 disc but not in the game itself. The one year that developer Obsidian had to make a bigger and better sequel simply wasn't enough - that much was apparent at review.

In this mod, over the course of 36 (!) maps, the zombies will dynamically evolve. The players will be able to upgrade their abilities using a lite RPG system. It's got a storyline, complete with new voiceover recordings. There are also survival maps that balance digging in to take a defensive position and running for your life.

Keiji InafuneThis is probably not the message you would want coming out at the end of the giant industry trade show that's supposed to be glorifying your native talents, but at the Tokyo Game Show earlier this week, Capcom's Keiji Inafune (creator of Mega Man and Dead Rising) shared his starkly damning assessment of the Japanese games industry: "it's finished."

The comments were made during an event showing off Dead Rising 2 (via Destructoid), where Inafune asked the attendees for their honest opinions of what they had seen at the show so far. Then, he shared his own: "Personally when I looked around [at] all the different games at the TGS floor, I said, 'Man, Japan is over. We're done. Our game industry is finished.'"

Only Bungie can get away with throwing a random string of letters after their game's name. Halo 3: ODST? Overdose street? Outdoor, sexually transmitted? Oddest? Of course, the Halo faithful know ODST stands for "orbital drop shock trooper" and everyone else eats up all things Halo, no matter how overpriced they are, much less the letters and numerals on the box. ODST is a sure-fire success. It's also a disappointment.

There are no long hallways and there is no torturous narrative. You don't have to escort anyone and you don't have to deal with your warthog gunner not being able to hit anything. There are no pre-placed snipers. There is no time limit. Master Chief himself is nowhere to be seen. You and up to three friends pick one of the eight maps and then hold out as long as you can while randomized waves of aliens assault you, gibbering and growling and hucking grenades and flanking you and dying obligingly to leave an assortment of guns scattered at your feet. It is Halo's Greatest Hits, The Condensed Version.

The LucasArts comeback wagon just keeps on rolling. It is a wagon laden with wondrous games both old and new, designed to trick us into falling in love with the computeryvideotasticgames arm of the George Lucas Empire all over again, even though it used to keep us locked in the cellar and whipped us with the metal end of its belt on a daily basis. It’s a deception few will grumble about, however. The revisiting of its back catalogue on download services (specifically, Steam and Direct2Drive) continues with the announcement that the Jedi Knight shooter/lightsaber series will fetch up on said services soon. That’s ’soon’ as in ‘tomorrow’. Wootini!

No word on price, but LucasArt’s ever-excitable Twitter feed assures us “we have been good in the past, right?” [Polite cough]. I, ah, think they mean the very recent past, rather than most of the last decade. What is confirmed is that it’s the entire Jedi Knight series — so not simply Jedi Knight 1 &2, but also Jediless predecessor Dark Forces (which I played through a frightening number of times back in the day), divisive and arguably underrated sequel Jedi Academy and JK1’s Mara Jade-centric (a fan-favourite expanded universe character who, I believe, eventually ended up getting hitched to Luke Skywalker once he finally stopped having dirty thoughts about his sister) expansion Mysteries of the Sith.

This took me by gentle surprise: ongoing fan patching of Pandemic’s seminal but rarely namedropped 1999 RTS/FPS/tank ‘em up Battlezone II. While it’s admittedly an acquired taste, it’s one of those games I regularly bust out whenever I feel a spot of joystick nostalgia, alongside Crimson Skies and Mechwarrior 4. The unofficial 1.3 patch for what was once an infamously buggy affair was originally created by two Pandemic chaps, and they’ve continued to update it even as they spend their day working on other games. Ten years on from the game’s release, patch 1.3 beta 5.1 (crivens) has just hit…

I’m not quite sure which frighteningly wobbly tower of CDs in my bedroom contains BZ2, so I can’t attest the efficacy of the changes myself, but the key points of 1.3 in general (beta 5.1 specifically brings performance improvements are bugfixes) an updated graphics engine that supports DIrectX9, hardware transform and lighting and anti-aliasing — in other words, a better-looking game and one that barely troubles CPUs.

Also, a shedload of new multiplayer maps and tweaks — which is an aspect of the game I confess I’ve never dabbled in. I’m too much of a coward to go up against guys who’ve been playing the game solidly for ten years.

"You have these people who like play different roles. Like the sniper. He's going to climb to the top of the water tower, put down his claymore mines, and pull out his sniper rifle. He's going to protect that control point over there. That's his mission. But what sometimes ends up happening is that nobody goes to the control point. He didn't get to play the game he wanted to play. And now his team is pissed off at him for it. Or what about the engineer? You see these bridges you can blow up, so you're like, "Oh, man, I'm the engineer, so I'm going to put these land mines on this bridge and hide in the bushes, and then it's going to be awesome when that enemy tank drives over the bridge". And then you stick around and you're waiting for it. And waiting for it. And the game ends and no one ever showed up. It's like you're initiating a challenge, saying, "Come be a part of this". And that handshake goes unshook."

That's Robert Siwiak, the producer of Timegate's latest game, Section 8. He says the central idea behind Section 8 is that you're going to get your handshake.

He also explains how the game is supposed to bring back people who don't play shooters any more; how it's a reaction to the peccadilloes of Battlefield 2, Counter-Strike, and Quake Wars; how you almost didn't get a jetpack; what went wrong with the pistol; how randomly generated maps in real time strategy games were an inspiration; and how the damage model is based on the Dune novels.

The single-player game is no longer a linear, mission-to-mission affair. You'll be given different hubs that allow you to click on people and items in order to gain understanding about the game world, and pick and choose which missions you would like to tackle. "These hubs operate in a similar fashion to briefing rooms from games like Wing Commander or X-Wing, but with an even greater degree of interaction," Shacknews explains. "You can talk to characters, interact with and examine various items in the environments, upgrade your units, and start up missions." Successfully completing these missions allows you to unlock new units, as well as cash to hire your own mercenaries to aid you in battle.

"The mercenaries function kind of like Hero Units from the Warcraft games. For a large fee, you can contract with various groups of mercenaries," Destructoid reports. "Once you've contracted them, you can then use them in battle by constructing a Merc Compound and then buying them like any normal unit."

According to a Game Informer survey of "close to 5,000 readers", the failure rate for the Xbox 360 is 54.2%. Among the owners of those failed systems, 41.2% suffered another failure after the repair. Which is a surprisingly low number from where I'm sitting. I've personally had to deal with eight (8) dead Xbox 360s. How did those 45.8% get so lucky?

In a surprise GDC Europe announcement, CCP CEO Hilmar Petursson has debuted Dust 514, a strategic first-person console MMO that connects in to the existing EVE Online universe, allowing ground battles for planets to be fought by console teams.

The announcement, with the trailer tagline of "one universe, one war," came at the end of a talk about the history of CCP. It left many GDC Europe keynote attendees -- perhaps expecting an announcement for World Of Darkness, CCP's other rumored project -- significantly surprised.

The trailer, with slick in-game graphics, showcased a space station and then impressive first-person shooter gameplay. Petursson said that Dust 514 is "our take on a console MMO," and was made after the company "looked hard at what people wanted to do on consoles."

As brought to our attention by Destructoid community blogger thefil, Team Fortress 2's next big class update ... isn't an actual class update. Instead, we are getting hats, glorious hats!

They are coming in all shapes and sizes, and there will be eighteen of them for you to cherish. There is even a new arena map on the way, "Offblast," which revolves around a missile silo lovingly packed into a mountain. But not just any mountain, oh no, we have reason to believe it's an evil mountain. Scream.

Given:

-Item drops occur every ~25 minutes of uninterrupted play, and on each drop there is a 25% chance the item drop will be successful, giving you an item.
This has been confirmed, the numbers are averages from raw data taken from the idler program's built-in feature that summarizes the number of idler's success rates.

-There is a .45% chance that a dropped item will be a hat.

-All hats have the same chance of dropping. Individual hats have a 0.5% chance.

Windows 7 performs better than Vista and is also faster than XP, although XP remains more capable for devices with limited memory and outdated graphics.

Subjectively, the change from Vista to Windows 7 is like releasing a car’s handbrake. This significant increase in performance has several causes: faster system startup and shutdown compared to XP and Vista; improved parallel processing; and faster loading of drivers and operating system components. Enterprise users will also appreciate the faster login to a domain.

Microsoft has also thoroughly revised the SuperFetch feature, which results in quicker operational readiness after startup. Anyone migrating from Vista will notice a reduction in disk activity after startup, because SuperFetch spends less time loading applications into memory in Windows 7, which means less waiting for the system to be ready to use after launch.

This afternoon Blizzard announced that the first installment of StarCraft II--entitled Wings of Liberty--will not hit retail stores at the end of the year as originally reported. In fact, the game is now slated for the first half of 2010. The company blames the game's delay on the upgrading process for Battle.net, saying that it's taken longer than expected to prepare the revamped service.

"The upgraded Battle.net is an integral part of the StarCraft II experience and will be an essential part of all of our games moving forward," Blizzard's PR team explained. "This extra development time will be critical to help us realize our vision for the service."

With Microsoft set to begin selling downloads of retail Xbox 360 games via Xbox Live's "Games on Demand" storefront, the platform maker has issued a list of the titles that will be available when the functionality launches on August 11.